A Stable Voltage-Programmed Pixel Circuit for a-Si:H AMOLED Displays

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays are attractive given the potentially low manufacturing cost and ultimately low-temperature fabrication enabling using flexible substrates. Although the conventional two thin-film transistor (2-TFT) AMOLED voltage-programmed pixel circuit (VPPC) can provide high resolution and high yield, the 2-TFT VPPC is prone to image retention over time due to shift in the threshold voltage (V_T-shift) of a-Si:H TFTs. This paper presents a new driving scheme that not only preserves the simplicity of the 2-TFT VPPC, but also demonstrates high uniformity. Experimental results indicate that the current drop in the new driving scheme is less than 11% after 15 days of operation whereas it is over 50% for the conventional driving scheme. Moreover, the new driving scheme is less sensitive to temperature variations due to an internal feedback mechanism. After a 70% change in the temperature, the current in the conventional driving scheme increases by as much as 300%. However, the current in the driving scheme presented here is approximately constant     

Improved alcohol-fixed smears of fine-needle aspirates for cytology of breast and other palpable lesions

The application of fine-needle aspiration cytology for the diagnosis of solid lesions is well-established. Its sensitivity as a diagnostic tool for both benign and malignant lesions can vary significantly, however, and depends on the quality of the smears submitted. In particular, air-drying artifact can render wet alcohol-fixed smears unsatisfactory for diagnosis. This study examines the basic cause of air-drying artifacts, which is directly related to the moisture of the aspirate that varies among tissues and specimens from any tumor type. A simple modification to the standard smearing technique incorporating precoated slides that introduces moisture into the aspirate is recommended. The technique is applicable to aspirates from all sites without compromising accepted diagnostic cytologic criteria, and offers excellent cytologic clarity with routine stains as well as being flexible enough for other investigative staining methods.     

Improving techniques for transportation problems

Summary This paper deals with new modifications of an algorithm based on triple indexing methods by Jakobsen enhancing its efficiency for long (mn) transportation problems. The new method consists in reusing a regular loop until it is exhausted, each reuse leading to another improving loop, without updating any of the dual variables.Experimental results exhibit savings of up to 75% iterationsand total time, while storage requirements are the same as in the regular method.

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Zusammenfassung Vorliegende Arbeit behandelt neue Modifikationen des auf einem dreifachen Indexierungsverfahren basierenden Algorithmus von Jakobsen, um seine Effizienz bei langen (mn) Problemen zusteigern.Das neue Verfahren beruht auf der Wiederverwendung eines regulären Zyklus bis zu seiner Erschöpfung. Dabei führt jede Wiederbenutzung zu einem weiteren verbesserten Zyklus, ohne daß die Dual-Variablen aufdatiert werden müssen.Rechenerfahrungen zeigen Einsparungen von bis zu 75% der Iterationenund Rechenzeit, bei gleichbleibendem Speicherbedarf.

     

Development of the meshless finite volume particle method with exact and efficient calculation of interparticle area

The Finite Volume Particle Method (FVPM) is a meshless method based on a definition of interparticle area which is closely analogous to cell face area in the classical finite volume method. In previous work, the interparticle area has been computed by numerical integration, which is a source of error and is extremely expensive. We show that if the particle weight or kernel function is defined as a discontinuous top-hat function, the particle interaction vectors may be evaluated exactly and efficiently. The new formulation reduces overall computational time by a factor between 6.4 and 8.2. In numerical experiments on a viscous flow with an analytical solution, the method converges under all conditions. Significantly, in contrast with standard FVPM and SPH, error depends on particle size but not on particle overlap (as long as the computational domain is completely covered by particles). The new method is shown to be superior to standard FVPM for shock tube flow and inviscid steady transonic flow. In benchmarking on a viscous multiphase flow application, FVPM with exact interparticle area is shown to be competitive with a mesh-based volume-of-fluid solver in terms of computational time required to resolve the structure of an interface.     

Anisotropic geodesics for live‐wire mesh segmentation

We present an interactive method for mesh segmentation that is inspired by the classical live‐wire interaction for image segmentation. The core contribution of the work is the definition and computation of wires on surfaces that are likely to lie at segment boundaries. We define wires as geodesics in a new tensor‐based anisotropic metric, which improves upon previous metrics in stability and feature‐awareness. We further introduce a simple but effective mesh embedding approach that allows geodesic paths in an anisotropic path to be computed efficiently using existing algorithms designed for Euclidean geodesics. Our tool is particularly suited for delineating segmentation boundaries that are aligned with features or curvature directions, and we demonstrate its use in creating artist‐guided segmentations.     

Chemical Stability of the Fiber Coating Matrix Interface in Silicon-Based Ceramic Matrix Composites

Carbon and boron nitride are used as fiber coatings in silicon-based composites. In order to assess the long-term stability of these materials, reactions of carbon/Si₃N₄ and BN/SiC were studied at high temperatures with Knudsen effusion, coupon tests, and by microstructural examination. In the carbon/Si₃N₄ system, carbon reacted with Si₃N₄ to form gaseous N₂ and SiC. The formation of SiC limited further reaction by physically separating the carbon and Si₃N₄. Consequently, the development of high p (N₂) at the interface, predicted from thermochemical calculations, did not occur, thus limiting the potential deleterious effects of the reaction on the composite. Strong indications of a reaction between BN and SiC were shown by TEM and SIMS analysis of the BN/SiC interface. In long-term exposures, this reaction can lead to a depletion of a BN coating and/or an unfavorable change of the interfacial properties, limiting the beneficial effects of the coating.     

Neutral sterols of sawflies (symphyta): Their relationship to other hymenoptera

To investigate sterol utilization in sawflies, the neutral sterols of four species of sawflies were determined by gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, and compared to the respective dietary plant material. Cholesterol was the predominant (55–76%) sterol in all species and stages of sawflies examined. Host plants, however, contained primarily sitosterol (50–88%), along with other 24-alkylsterols and only 0.5–5.9% cholesterol, indicating that the sawflies examined are capable of dealkylating the C₂₈ and C₂₉ phytosterols in their diet to cholesterol. Comparative sterol metabolism in Hymenoptera is discussed.     

An embedding approach for the design of state‐feedback tracking controllers for references with jumps

We study the problem of designing state‐feedback controllers to track time‐varying state trajectories that may exhibit jumps. Both plants and controllers considered are modeled as hybrid dynamical systems, which are systems with both continuous and discrete dynamics, given in terms of a flow set, a flow map, a jump set, and a jump map. Using recently developed tools for the study of stability in hybrid systems, we recast the tracking problem as the task of asymptotically stabilizing a set, the tracking set, and derive conditions for the design of state‐feedback tracking controllers with the property that the jump times of the plant coincide with those of the given reference trajectories. The resulting tracking controllers guarantee that solutions of the plant starting close to the reference trajectory stay close to it and that the difference between each solution of the controlled plant and the reference trajectory converges to zero asymptotically. Constructive conditions for tracking control design in terms of LMIs are proposed for a class of hybrid systems with linear maps and input‐triggered jumps. The results are illustrated by various examples. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Approximate similarity search for online multimedia services on distributed CPU–GPU platforms

Similarity search in high-dimensional spaces is a pivotal operation for several database applications, including online content-based multimedia services. With the increasing popularity of multimedia applications, these services are facing new challenges regarding (1) the very large and growing volumes of data to be indexed/searched and (2) the necessity of reducing the response times as observed by end-users. In addition, the nature of the interactions between users and online services creates fluctuating query request rates throughout execution, which requires a similarity search engine to adapt to better use the computation platform and minimize response times. In this work, we address these challenges with Hypercurves, a flexible framework for answering approximate k-nearest neighbor (kNN) queries for very large multimedia databases. Hypercurves executes in hybrid CPU–GPU environments and is able to attain massive query-processing rates through the cooperative use of these devices. Hypercurves also changes its CPU–GPU task partitioning dynamically according to the observed load, aiming for optimal response times. In our empirical evaluation, dynamic task partitioning reduced query response times by approximately 50 % compared to the best static task partition. Due to a probabilistic proof of equivalence to the sequential kNN algorithm, the CPU–GPU execution of Hypercurves in distributed (multi-node) environments can be aggressively optimized, attaining superlinear scalability while still guaranteeing, with high probability, results at least as good as those from the sequential algorithm.     

Anticipating Degradation in State Estimation Accuracy via Online Nonlinear Observability Analysis

A methodology is proposed to enable real-time evaluation of the observability of local motions, and generate a local observability cost map to enable informed local motion planning in order to avoid potential degradation or degeneracy in state estimator performance. The proposed approach leverages efficient numerical techniques in nonlinear observability analysis and motion primitive-based planning technique to realize the local observability prediction with real-time performance. The degradation of the state estimation performance can be readily predicted with the local observability evaluation result. The proposed approach is specialized to a representative optimization-based monocular visual-inertial state estimation formulation and evaluated through simulation and experiments. The experimental results demonstrated the ability of the proposed methodology to correctly anticipate the potential state estimation degradation.