Understanding and overcoming horizontal separation complexity in air traffic control: an expert/novice comparison

Cognition, Technology & Work - Humans still play a key role in air traffic control but their performances limit the capacity of the airspace and are responsible for delays. At the tactical...     

Real-time MRI-based control of a ferromagnetic core for endovascular navigation

This paper shows that even a simple proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller can be used in a clinical MRI system for real-time navigation of a ferromagnetic bead along a predefined trajectory. Although the PID controller has been validated in vivo in the artery of a living animal using a conventional clinical MRI platform, here the rectilinear navigation of a ferromagnetic bead is assessed experimentally along a two-dimensional (2D) path as well as the control of the bead in a pulsatile flow. The experimental results suggest the likelihood of controlling untethered microdevices or robots equipped with a ferromagnetic core inside complex pathways in the human body.     

Automatic estimation of asymmetry for gradient-based alignment of noisy images on Lie group

Many parametric image alignment approaches assume equality of the images to register up to motion compensation. In presence of noise this assumption does not hold. In particular, for gradient-based approaches, which rely on the optimization of an error functional with gradient descent methods, the performances depend on the amount of noise in each image. We propose in this paper to use the Asymmetric Composition on Lie groups (ACL) formulation of the alignment problem to improve the robustness in presence of asymmetric levels of noise. The ACL formulation, generalizing state-of-the-art gradient-based image alignment, introduces a parameter to weight the influence of the images during the optimization. Three new methods are presented to estimate this asymmetry parameter: one supervised (MVACL) and two fully automatic (AACL and GACL). Theoretical results and experimental validation show how the new algorithms improve robustness in presence of noise. Finally, we illustrate the interest of the new approaches for object tracking under low-light conditions.     

A design process enabling adaptation in pervasive heterogeneous contexts

In the next decades, the growth in population aging will cause important problems to most industrialized countries. To tackle this issue, Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) systems can reinforce the well-being of elderly people, by providing emergency, autonomy enhancement, and comfort services. These services will postpone the need of a medicalized environment and will allow the elderly to stay longer at home. However, each elderly has specific needs and a deployment environment of such services is likely unique. Furthermore, the needs evolve over time, and so does the deployment environment of the system. In this paper, we propose the use of a model-based development method, the adaptive medium approach, to enable dynamic adaptation of AAL systems. We also propose improvements to make it more suited to the AAL domain, such as considering heterogeneity and a composition model. The paper includes an evaluation of the prototype implementing the approach, and a comparison with related work.     

Albumin as a carrier for NO delivery: preparation,physicochemical characterization,and interaction with gold nanoparticles

Background: Nitric oxide (NO) is a gaseous transmitter playing numerous physiological roles and characterized by a short half-life. Its binding to endogenous thiols increases its stability, facilitating its storage and transport. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nitrosated serum albumin (SA-SNO) and to provide a reference for its easy preparation for further use in in vitro studies.

Methods: Serum albumin (SA) was S-nitrosated by reacting with (i) NaNO₂ in acidic medium; (ii) different low-molecular weight S-nitrosothiols (RSNO) (S-nitrosocysteine (CysNO), S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO), and S,S'-dinitrosobucillamine (Buc(NO)₂)); and (iii) diethylamine NONOate (DEA/NO). SA-SNO was purified by size exclusion chromatography and the S-nitrosation site and the rate were studied by mass spectrometry and Griess–Saville assay, respectively. Then, SA-SNO was characterized by spectrofluorimetry, dynamic light scattering, and circular dichroism. Finally, SA-SNO reactivity with citrate stabilized gold nanoparticles (AuNP-citrate) was investigated via determination of NO release.

Results: S-nitrosation rates of SA were 90.1?±?3.3, 76.8?±?2.7, 80.3?±?3.2, 84.8?±?5.0, and 15.4?±?1.9% (n?=?5), when SA was reacted with acidified NaNO₂, CysNO, GSNO, Buc(NO)₂, and DEA/NO, respectively. The physicochemical characterization indicated that the resulting product corresponded to a mono-S-nitrosothiol (on cysteine-34), and the conformational construction remained unchanged. Stability studies showed that the NO content was preserved over 1 week. AuNP-citrate reacted with SA-SNO with increase of its hydrodynamic diameter but preservation of SNO bond.

Conclusions: SA-SNO prepared and stored under the reported conditions affords a well-defined reference suitable for in vitro studies.     

Control of the electromagnetic compatibility: An issue for IC reliability

This paper deals with the use of two main standard modeling approaches in order to control the electromagnetic compatibility of an IC before manufacturing. An application is given in the case of a complex mixed circuit which is an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) embedded in a microcontroller. The digital core (DC) of the microcontroller consumes dynamic currents which generate internal disturbances and, as a consequence, a loss of the ADC accuracy is observed. At first, the conducted emission of the DC is estimated by using the ICEM-CE model. Then, the ADC immunity is modeled with ICIM-CI methodology. Based on these two models, a simulation at the chip level is performed to estimate the loss of accuracy of this ADC. Finally, this study is the first step in the development of a methodology for virtual prototyping allowing, from the design, the evaluation of the integrated circuit sensitivity to electromagnetic interference in order to improve its reliability.