A Data-Reusing Nonlinear Gradient Descent Algorithm for a Class of Complex-Valued Neural Adaptive Filters

A complex-valued data-reusing nonlinear gradient descent (CDRNGD) learning algorithm for a class of complex-valued nonlinear neural adaptive filters is introduced and the affinity between the family of data-reusing algorithms and the class of normalised gradient descent algorithms is examined. Error bounds on the class of complex data-reusing algorithms are established and indicate the stability of such algorithms. Experiments on nonlinear inputs show the class of complex data-reusing algorithms outperforming the standard complex nonlinear gradient descent algorithms and converging to the normalised complex non-linear gradient descent algorithm without experiencing the stability problems commonly encountered with normalised gradient descent algorithms. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Different patterns of biting attack employed by lactating female mice (Mus domesticus) in encounters with male and female conspecific intruders.

Attacks by resident lactating female mice were examined in a variety of situations. Relatively few attack bites to vulnerable body regions were seen when pairs of unfamiliar lactating females fought, establishing social status prior to communal nesting. Sexually naive male and female intruders were equally prone to attack by lactating females, but patterns of bite attack generated by them were very different; males received the more damaging attacks. More signs of "fear" were seen in the lactating females' responses to male rather than female intruders. Varied motivations may underlie attacks by lactating females directed to conspecific intruders. Defensive patterns of biting by lactating females are more consistently directed towards males, intruders that are more likely to harm or destroy the litter. Although attacks by females rarely thwarted infanticide by male intruders, the behavior may acutely protect parental investment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Competitive inhibition of swine kidney copper amine oxidase by drugs: amiloride, clonidine, and gabexate mesylate

Carotid artery injuries from seat belt shoulder straps have been reported involving primarily the internal carotid artery. This paper describes a case of common carotid artery disruption and tracheal transection after a shoulder strap seat belt injury. A successful method for management of this rare injury is presented. Repair involved autogenous arterial replacement in a contaminated field using an interposition graft of superficial femoral artery.     

New closed-form expressions for SNR estimates of Nakagami fading channels by the method of moments

Method of moments has been a parameter estimation technique appropriate to calculate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimates in fading channel models in which an optimal technique like maximum likelihood estimation is not mathematically tractable. In this article, the ratio of the second moment squared to the fourth moment of the received signal envelope is considered to calculate an exact expression for the SNR estimate in Nakagami-m fading channel for M-QAM and \(\theta \)-MQAM modulations as well as expressions to evaluate the variance and the mean of the estimate. The paper presents two useful contributions for SNR estimation theory on Nakagami fading. Besides the exact algebraic expression for the estimate for a generalized QAM modulation scheme, its performance is evaluated through a statistical linearization argument.     

Conceptual model-based design and environmental evaluation of waste solvent technologies: Application to the separation of the mixture acetone-water

In this paper, two waste solvent technologies are presented as alternatives to the disposal of spent acetone-water mixtures.

In the first alternative, a batch rectifier is used to concentrate the waste in order to obtain a distillate with a higher calorific value, which is then sent to off-site incineration either in a cement kiln or in a conventional waste solvent incinerator. The second alternative is a hybrid process composed by a batch rectifier and a pervaporation unit that processes in batchwise mode the first cut from the distillation task to obtain a dehydrated solvent. Here, four scenarios are considered, comprising two kinds of membrane materials and two different vacuum systems.

For each alternative, the conceptual design was carried out with the aid of conceptual models of the unit operations involved. Quasi-optimal values for design and operation variables were used as input data to perform an economical and an environmental assessment of each alternative. The economic analysis suggests that the hybrid process is the best alternative given that the replacement cost of fresh solvent (about 850 U$S/ton) is considered as a credit value.

From the environmental analysis with life cycle assessment, two main conclusions can be drawn: i) the use of the distillate as an alternative fuel in a cement kiln leads to a reduction in emissions that is relevant for the categories related to human health and ecosystem quality; and ii) in terms of resource depletion, the hybrid process distillation/pervaporation with the ceramic membrane HybSi (Pervatech) shows the lowest impact due to the solvent recovery.     

Integrating a collaboration script and group awareness to support group regulation and emotions towards collaborative problem solving

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning - The research landscape displays increasing awareness of the important role of self-regulation and emotions in the process of...     

Homography vs similarity transformation in aerial mosaicking: which is the best at different altitudes?

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Aerial image mosaicking of an area of interest is the process of combining multiple images, of an area with overlapping regions, into a single comprehensive...     

Robot Teams for Intervention in Confined and Structured Environments

Safety, security, and rescue robotics can be extremely useful in emergency scenarios such as mining accidents or tunnel collapses where robot teams can be used to carry out cooperative exploration, intervention, or logistic missions. Deploying a multirobot team in such confined environments poses multiple challenges that involve task planning, motion planning, localization and mapping, safe navigation, coordination, and communications among all the robots. To complete their mission, robots have to be able to move in the environment with full autonomy while at the same time maintaining communication among themselves and with their human operators to accomplish team collaboration. Guaranteeing connectivity enables robots to explicitly exchange information needed in the execution of collaborative tasks and allows operators to monitor and teleoperate the robots and receive information about the environment. In this work, we present a system that integrates several research aspects to achieve a real exploration exercise in a tunnel using a robot team. These aspects are as follows: deployment planning, semantic feature recognition, multirobot navigation, localization, map building, and real‐time communications. Two experimental scenarios have been used for the assessment of the system. The first is the Spanish Santa Marta mine, a large mazelike environment selected for its complexity for all the tasks involved. The second is the Spanish‐French Somport tunnel, an old railway between Spain and France through the Central Pyrenees, used to carry out the real‐world experiments. The latter is a simpler scenario, but it serves to highlight the real communication issues.     

Real-time velocity measurement to linear motion of a rigid object with monocular image sequence analyses

This paper presents a methodology and all procedures used to validate it, which were executed in a physics laboratory under controlled and known conditions. The validation was based on the analyses of registered data in an image sequence and the measurements acquired by high precision sensors. This methodology intended to measure the velocity of a rigid object in linear motion with the use of an image sequence acquired by commercial digital video camera. The proposed methodology does not need a stereo pair of images to calculate the object position in the 3D space: it needs only images sequence acquired for one, only one, angle view (monocular vision). To do so, these objects need to be detected while in movement, which is conducted by the application of a segmentation technique based on the temporal average values of each pixel registered in N consecutive image frames. After detecting and framing these objects, specific points belonging to the object (pixels), on the plane image (2D coordinates or space image), are automatically chosen, which are then transformed into corresponding points in the space object (3D coordinates) by the application of collinearity equations or rational functions (proposed in this work). After obtaining the coordinates of these points in the space object that are registered in the sequence of images, the distance, in meters, covered by the object in a particular time interval may be measured and, consequently, its velocity can be calculated. The system is low cost, use only a computer (architecture Intel I3), and a webcam used to acquire the images (640 × 480, 30 fps). The complexity of the algorithm is linear, fact that allows the system to operate in real time. The results of the analyses are discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of the method are presented.     

Real-time blind audio source separation: performance assessment on an advanced digital signal processor

Many on-line blind audio source separation (BASS) algorithms have been presented so far to the scientific community, but only a few of them have been evaluated in terms of their real-time performance. In this paper we consider a well-established BASS method (oriented to voices separation) evaluating its performance in terms of separation quality allowed by a real-time embedded computing implementation, also considering novel and state-of-the-art improvements to the it. To this aim, the algorithm has been implemented and ported for real-time execution onto an advanced low-power digital signal processor targeted for complex-domain applications. The optimized embedded implementation is able to perform up to five iterations of the gradient for any input frame of data, achieving good separation levels (up to 11.8 dB of signal to interference ratio on custom recording in real environments). The proposed solution doubles the performance of a C-optimized version running on a traditional PC processor, achieving a better separation result with lower power requirements.