Piston Motion Performance Analysis of a 3DOF Electrothermal MEMS Scanner for Medical Applications

MEMS scanners are useful for medical applications as optical coherence tomography and laser microsurgery. Although widespread design of MEMS scanners have been presented, their behavior is not well known, and thus, their motions are not easily and efficiently controlled. This deficiency induces several difficulties (limited resolution, accuracy, cycle time, etc.), and to tackle this problem, this article presents the modeling of an ISC electrothermally actuated MEMS mirror and the experimental characterization for the piston motion. Modeling and characterization are important to implement the control. A multiphysic model is proposed, and an experimental validation is performed with a good correspondence for a voltage range from 0 V to 3.5 V with a maximum displacement up to 200 µm and with a relative tilting difference of 0.1°. The article also presents a simple and efficient experimental setup to measure a displacement in dynamic and static mode, or a mirror plane tilting in static mode.     

The frequent paucity of trivial strings

A 1976 theorem of Chaitin can be used to show that arbitrarily dense sets of lengths n have a paucity of trivial strings (only a bounded number of strings of length n having trivially low plain Kolmogorov complexities). We use the probabilistic method to give a new proof of this fact. This proof is much simpler than previously published proofs, and it gives a tighter paucity bound.     

Temporal logic for process specification and recognition

Acting intelligently in dynamic environments involves anticipating surrounding processes, for example to foresee a dangerous situation by recognizing a process and inferring respective safety zones. Process recognition is thus key to mastering dynamic environments including surveillance tasks. In this paper, we are concerned with a logic-based approach to process specification, recognition, and interpretation. We demonstrate that linear temporal logic (LTL) provides the formal grounds on which processes can be specified. Recognition can then be approached as a model checking problem. The key feature of this logic-based approach is its seamless integration with logic inference which can sensibly supplement the incomplete observations of the robot. Furthermore, logic allows us to query for process occurrences in a flexible manner and it does not rely on training data. We present a case study with a robotic observer in a warehouse logistics scenario. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that LTL provides an adequate basis for process recognition.     

A method for assessing the impact of product development on the company

Because of competitiveness, the problem of product and production system developments is becoming increasingly current. From the point of view of products and production systems, companies must have tools to redesign, analyse, choose and manage their developments. After analysing which tools and methods exist in the scientific literature, we present in this paper a general method for assessing the impact of product development on the company. This method can be applied for each criterion that the company wants to analyse (delay, cost, organization, resources, quality, etc); we choose here the delay criterion. The method features four steps. The first step aims to characterize the case study by representing it with generic parameters. The second step offers the construction of a matrix model (called a static model) in order to categorize the product developments. The third step proposes the construction of a Temporized Coloured Petri Net model (called a dynamic model) and the fourth step simulates this model in order to obtain the expected result: the assessment of impact of the product development. At the end of the paper, we propose a case study on a roller tapered bearing manufacturer-- the Timken company.     

Emerging pesticide metabolites in groundwater and surface water as determined by the application of a multimethod for 150 pesticide metabolites

A recently developed multimethod for the determination of 150 pesticide metabolites was exemplarily applied to 58 samples of groundwater and surface water. 37 of these metabolites were detected in at least two samples with a concentration ≥0.025 μg/L. The detected metabolites were ranked according to their concentration and frequency of detection. Findings are clearly dominated by metabolites of chloroacetanilide herbicides, but metabolites of sulfonylurea and thiocarbamate herbicides and other herbicides (dichlobenil) together with metabolites of some fungicides (tolylfluanid, chlorothalonil, trifloxystrobin) were also prominent. A number of 17 of the ranked metabolites are denoted as emerging metabolites because no reports on their previous detection in groundwater or surface water were found. Most of them, however, were correctly predicted to occur in the summary reports of the European pesticide approval process. Median total concentrations of the analysed pesticide metabolites summed up to 0.62 μg/L in groundwater and 0.33 μg/L in surface waters. While the concentration of the individual metabolites is usually low (<0.1 μg/L) the diversity of metabolites found in one sample can be large; between two and six metabolites were detected most frequently (maximum of 12 metabolites). Runoff from urban surfaces was investigated in this study and also here previously undetected pesticide (biocide) metabolites were detected. The emerging pesticide metabolites detected in environmental water samples in this study require more extended monitoring.     

Phase Margin Determination in a Closed-Loop Configuration

A new and simple method is presented for determining the stability margin of a system with feedback. Contrary to classical and established methods the described procedure circumvents prior simulation of the loop gain. Instead, the phase margin is found by circuit simulation of the system in a closed-loop configuration. For this purpose, the phase slope of the closed-loop transfer function is evaluated after injecting some additional phase shift into the feedback loop. Moreover, the proposed method can also be applied to support the design of a system that requires a specified margin.     

Admission control and resource optimization for multiple-user OFDMA Cognitive Radio systems

In Cognitive Radio (CR) systems, the fluctuating nature of the available frequency resource due to Primary Users (PUs) activity necessitates the introduction of admission and eviction measures at the CR system if a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) is required by Real Time (RT) Secondary Users (SUs). This problem has been recently addressed in the literature with simplified assumptions that might become unrealistic in practical system setups. In this paper, we tackle the problem of admission and eviction control of RT SUs in multiple-user Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) CR systems and propose new solutions that are practical and efficient at the same time. In particular, we propose three different ways to install a Resource Buffer Zone (RBZ) at the time of admission to limit future call drops resulting from fluctuating PU activity. We also study the effect of PU activity on the feasibility of the resource allocation problem and propose three different methods to resolve system outages once they occur. Numerical results obtained through Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed techniques.     

Next-Generation Sequencing as a Tool for Detailed Molecular Characterisation of Genomic Insertions and Flanking Regions in Genetically Modified Plants: a Pilot Study Using a Rice Event Unauthorised in the EU

Precise molecular characterisation of genetic modifications integrated into the genomes of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and of their flanking genomic regions forms a key component for the development of event-specific detection methods. In the EU, this information is of particular importance for risk management in cases where genetic modifications of unauthorised GM food, feed or seeds are detected. PCR-based chromosome walking approaches are commonly used for DNA sequence determination of the genetic modifications and of the flanking genomic regions in yet undescribed GM plants. If the plant contains complex and re-arranged modifications, sequencing and molecular characterisation are often difficult and laborious. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) of DNA is a powerful alternative tool to rapidly generate primary sequence data on the genome of so far uncharacterised sample material if pure GMO material is available. Recently, robust NGS platforms and affordable sequencing services are accessible for food and feed control laboratories. We here present a NGS-based study for whole-genome sequencing of the GM rice event LLRice62 as a proof-of-principle experiment to develop bioinformatics easy-to-use data analysis tools for rapid molecular characterisation. A total of 171,657,155 read mate pairs of approximately 75 bp each were obtained. Sequence reads belonging to the genetic modifications and their flanking genomic regions in LLRice62 were identified by bioinformatic comparison to the corresponding Oryza sativa ssp. japonica reference genome sequence using the Illumina InDel caller software and subsequent iterative mapping of retrieved NGS reads. An entire genetic modification of 1,493 bp in the genome of the LLRice62 sample material was determined and correctly mapped on chromosome 6. The determined nucleotide sequence coincides to the genetic modification described by the developer of this rice event. This study demonstrates for the first time the applicability of NGS for molecular characterisation of uncharacterised GMOs.