Performance comparison of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-based single- and double-stage digital interpolators

In this article, the performance of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-based single- and double-stage digital interpolators have been compared. The basic interpolator for up-sampling can be a combination of an expander unit with an interpolation lowpass filter in cascade. Complicated implementations can be done by connecting multiple expander and low-pass filter pairs in cascade. This article presents the efficient and effective implementation of digital interpolation systems for up-sampling of single- and double-stage digital interpolators. Comparison is done in terms of spectrum of generated signal, envelope power, modulated signal trajectory, input and output constellation and noise performance. In this article, the proposed interpolation filters have been simulated in Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS).     

Gain Adapted Optimum Mixture Estimation Scheme for Single Channel Speech Separation

This paper presents the proof of an Optimum mixture estimator for the single channel speech separation problem, which is a technique for separating two speech signals from a single recording of their mixture. The presented work is an attempt to solve a fundamental limitation in the current single channel speech separation techniques, in which it is assumed that the data used in the training as well as test phases of the separation model have the same energy levels. To overcome this limitation, a gain adapted Optimum mixture estimator is derived, which estimates the mixture of speech signals under the different signal-to-signal ratios (SSRs). Specifically, the speakers’ gains are incorporated as unknown parameters into the separation model, and then the estimator is derived in terms of the source distributions and SSR. It is demonstrated that the use of the Optimum mixture estimator results in the lower estimation error than the non-linear mapping (log and inverse-log operations)-based Mixture-Maximization (MixMax) or Quadratic estimators. The experimental results based on the real speech data also depict that the proposed estimator improves the mixture estimation performance significantly when compared with MixMax or Quadratic estimators with the gain adaptation.     

Poling of pyroelectric thin films

Abstract

Poling of calcium and zirconium modified lead titanate pyroelelectric thin films has been studied. Poling temperature and electrical field were optimized to achieve high figure of merits. It was found that thermal activation is important to obtain highly poled films. Defect-dipole complexes are supposed to play a major role to retain the polarization and also to enhance it. Porous calcium substituted films achieved an up to three times higer voltage response than zirconate substituted thin films, because porosity decreased the dielectric constant significantly.     

Shape optimization using adaptive shape refinement

A large part of the computational effort in shape optimization problems is expended in the numerical computation of the gradients for sensitivity information. This effort increases dramatically with an increase in the number of variables used to represent the shape. An adaptation of the gradient projection algorithm for shape optimization problems is described here along with a method to reduce the intermediate size of the optimization problem by allowing adaptive refinement of the shape. The method is demonstrated with a simple representative test case.     

The effect of deformation history on the morphology and properties of blends of polycarbonate and a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer

The effect of deformation history on the morphology and properties of liquid crystalline polymers (LCP) blended with polycarbonate resin was assessed. The addition of an immiscible LCP phase was found to improve the melt processability of the host thermoplastic polymer. In addition, by employing a suitable deformation history, the LCP phase may be elongated and oriented such that a microfibrillar morphology can be retained in the solid state.     

The meiotic recombination hot spot created by the single-base substitution ade6-M26 results in remodeling of chromatin structure in fission yeast

The G -->T transversion mutation, ade6-M26, creates the heptanucleotide sequence ATGACTG, which lies close to the 5' end of the open reading frame of the ade6 gene in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The mutation generates a meiosis-specific recombination hot spot and a binding site for the Mts1/Mts2 protein. We examined the chromatin structure at the ade6 locus in the M26 strain and compared it to that of the wild-type and hot spot-negative control M375. Micrococcal nuclease (MNase) digestion and indirect end-labeling methods were applied. In the M26 strain, we detected a new MNase-hypersensitive site at the position of the M26 mutation and no longer observed the phasing of nucleosomes seen in the wild-type and the M375 strains. Quantitative comparison of MNase sensitivity of the chromatin in premeiotic and meiotic cultures revealed a small meiotic induction of MNase hypersensitivity in the ade6 promoter region of the wild-type and M375 strains. The meiotic induction of MNase hypersensitivity was enhanced significantly in the ade6 promoter region of the M26 strain and also occurred at the M26 mutation site. The formation of the MNase-sensitive region around the heptamer sequence was abolished by the introduction of single-nucleotide substitutions in the heptamer sequence, which also abolish hot spot activity and binding of Mts1/Mts2. These data suggest that Mts1/Mts2 binding to the heptamer sequence results in a chromatin structure suitable for the recruitment of a meiosis-specific recombination function or functions.     

Bibliography of literature on reliability in civil engineering

This paper presents a brief introduction and an extensive list of selective references on civil engineering reliability with an emphasis on structural reliability and associated topics.     

Stochastic models for evaluating probability of system failure due to human error

This paper presents four mathematical models of redundant systems with human error. Laplace transforms of the state probability equations are developed. Mean time to failure (MTTF) formulas are developed.