Evolutionary design and implementation of a hard disk drive servo control system

The ever increasing demand for higher storage capacity and smaller magnetic hard disk drives have driven the need of developing a high performance head positioning servo control system. To meet the challenge, this paper presents the design and real-time implementation of a robust two-degree-of-freedom servo system for physical 3.5-in. hard disk drive with single voice-coil-motor actuator using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm toolbox. Besides the simplicity in controller structure, such an evolutionary servo control system is capable of meeting various performance specifications of hard disk drives in both the time and frequency domains. It is shown that the servo system optimally moves the magnetic head onto the desired track with minimal control effort, and keeps it on the track robustly against plant uncertainties or runout disturbances. Validation results of the evolutionary servo control system are compared with classical PID and RPT controllers, which show excellent closed-loop response and robustness in the face of practical perturbations in HDD.     

Imbalanced text classification: A term weighting approach

The natural distribution of textual data used in text classification is often imbalanced. Categories with fewer examples are under-represented and their classifiers often perform far below satisfactory. We tackle this problem using a simple probability based term weighting scheme to better distinguish documents in minor categories. This new scheme directly utilizes two critical information ratios, i.e. relevance indicators. Such relevance indicators are nicely supported by probability estimates which embody the category membership. Our experimental study using both Support Vector Machines and Naïve Bayes classifiers and extensive comparison with other classic weighting schemes over two benchmarking data sets, including Reuters-21578, shows significant improvement for minor categories, while the performance for major categories are not jeopardized. Our approach has suggested a simple and effective solution to boost the performance of text classification over skewed data sets.     

The exchanged hypercube

This paper presents the exchanged hypercube, a new interconnection network obtained by systematically removing links from a binary hypercube. It maintains several desirable properties of the binary hypercube yet with reduced interconnection complexity. We also introduce the extended binomial tree, a spanning tree of the exchanged hypercube that preserves many desirable properties of the original binomial tree. A fault-tolerant routing strategy is also proposed for the exchanged hypercube.     

A Subsequence Matching Algorithm that Supports Normalization Transform in Time-Series Databases

In this paper, an algorithm is proposed for subsequence matching that supports normalization transform in time-series databases. Normalization transform enables finding sequences with similar fluctuation patterns even though they are not close to each other before the normalization transform. Simple application of existing subsequence matching algorithms to support normalization transform is not feasible since the algorithms do not have information for normalization transform of subsequences of arbitrary lengths. Application of the existing whole matching algorithm supporting normalization transform to the subsequence matching is feasible, but requires an index for every possible length of the query sequence causing serious overhead on both storage space and update time. The proposed algorithm generates indexes only for a small number of different lengths of query sequences. For subsequence matching it selects the most appropriate index among them. Better search performance can be obtained by using more indexes. In this paper, the approach is called index interpolation. It is formally proved that the proposed algorithm does not cause false dismissal. The search performance can be traded off with storage space by adjusting the number of indexes. For performance evaluation, a series of experiments is conducted using the indexes for only five different lengths out of lengths 256512 of the query sequence. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the sequential scan by up to 2.4 times on the average when the selectivity of the query is 10^–2 and up to 14.6 times when it is 10^–5. Since the proposed algorithm performs better with smaller selectivities, it is suitable for practical situations, where the queries with smaller selectivities are much more frequent.     

An approach to minimize build errors in direct metal laser sintering

This paper discusses the effect of geometric shape on the accuracy of direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) prototypes. The percentage shrinkages due to different shapes are investigated and their empirical relationship is determined. A new speed-compensation (SC) method is proposed to reduce uneven shrinkage affected by the two-dimensional geometric shape at each layer. From case studies conducted, the optimized SC method is found to be efficient in improving the accuracy of prototypes fabricated. Note to Practitioners-This paper aims to address the problem of dimensional errors of parts built by the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process. Existing compensation approaches are normally based on a general relationship between the nominal dimensions and the errors after sintering. However, the effect arising from different geometric shapes is not considered. A new approach is proposed using different scan speed settings to compensate for the effect of geometric shapes to improve the dimensional accuracy of the entire part. During processing, the laser sinters along the trajectory are guided by the hatch vectors or dexel. An appropriate experimental method is used to establish the relationship for different scan speeds with the dexel length to the final accuracy. When building the part, the laser scan speed is adjusted dynamically according to the dexel length which varies with the geometric shape of the part. The case study demonstrates that the proposed method can generate correct speed settings to effectively increase the dimensional accuracy of the final part. Although this method has been developed based on the DMLS process, it is also applicable to other laser sintering processes. In future research, other process parameters, such as laser power, will be considered independently, or together with the scan speed, for possible further improvement on the dimensional accuracy.     

Transfection of the gene for B7-1 but not B7-2 can induce immunity to murine malignant mesothelioma

A 56-year-old female with rheumatoid arthritis was admitted because of bilateral hip pain. In a few months of her hospitalization, a relatively abrupt renal dysfunction was emerged besides complement breakdown, and renal biopsy revealed crescentic glomerulonephritis. Immunofluorescence study showed peripheral granular deposits of IgG, IgM, and C3 in the glomeruli. Cresents were predominantly composed of macrophages and glomerular epithelial cells. Amyloid nephropathy, renal vasuculitis, and association of other collagen vascular diseases were negligible for the causative factor. It was suggested that immune complexes were formed in the glomeruli, in which both humoral and cellular immune responses were to be induced, that brought cescents formation in the lesions. Crescentic glomerulonephritis in patients with rheumatoid arthritis is rare and a possible pathogenetic mechanisms involved in the development of renal dysfunction are discussed with the special reference to immune complex-induced inflammation.     

Contribution of phospholipase C-beta3 phosphorylation to the rapid attenuation of opioid-activated phosphoinositide response

Our objective was: (1) to determine the appropriate dose of new ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide particles for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). This agent comprised of a single iron oxide crystal stabilized with a carbohydrate-polyethylene glycol coat (PEG-Ferron/NC 100150 injection); (2) to determine the proper flip angle for PEG-Ferron-enhanced 3 D time-of-flight (TOF) MRA sequence; and (3) to compare the enhancement of peripheral vessels following PEG-Ferron and GdDTPA-BMA. MRA parameters were: TR/TE = 50/2.1 ms, NEX = 1, FOV = 30 x 30 x 1.8 cm, and matrix = 256 x 128 x 64. In anesthetized beagle dogs (n = 10), the effects of PEG-Ferron and GdDTPA-BMA on regional signal were monitored for 45 min and compared. The lowest dose of PEG-Ferron (0.05 mmol/kg) produced the best enhancement of primary, secondary and tertiary vessels. The flip angle 60 degrees provided better enhancement than 20 degrees on contrast enhanced images. Unlike GdDTPA-BMA, PEG-Ferron allowed prolonged delineation (> 45 min) of the pelvis and lower extremities circulation. PEG-Ferron provided greater Contrast-to-noise ratio CNR (80.2 +/- 6.2, P < 0.05) than GdDTPA-BMA (63.5 +/- 2.5). It may be possible for blood pool contrast-enhanced 3 D TOF MRA to provide valuable information for visualization of vascular tree including guiding interventions.     

Specific interaction between tetrandrine and Quillaja saponins in promoting permeabilization of plasma membrane in human leukemic HL-60 cells

Spontaneous Ni2+ entry (leak), measured as fluorescence quench in fura-2-loaded HL-60 cells at the excitation wavelength of 360 nm, was strongly inhibited by tetrandrine (TET, 100 microM), a Ca2+ antagonist of Chinese herbal origin. Exposure of the cells for 5 min to saponins from Quillaja saponaria (QS, 30 microg/ml), surfactants well known to permeabilize the plasma membrane by complexing with cholesterol, promoted Ni2+ entry without causing fura-2 leak-out. Unexpectedly, TET caused an immediate (within 2.5 min) augmentation of QS-promoted Ni2+ entry; and a 5-min treatment with both TET and QS resulted not only in an enhanced Ni2+ entry, but also a fura-2 leak-out. Ginseng saponins (100 microg/ml) alone or together with TET did not cause such a permeabilization. Permeabilization induced by 1-3 microM digitonin, another cholesterol-complexing glycoside, could not be enhanced by TET. TET did not affect permeabilization induced by Triton X-100 (0.01%), a detergent which non-specifically disrupts the hydrophobic interaction at the plasma membrane. TET also did not enhance Ni2+ entry triggered by ionomycin (0.35 microM) or SK&F 96365 (20 microM). Further, it did not augment Ni2+ entry when the plasma membrane fluidity was modulated by changes of temperature (27-47 degrees C) or treatment with 5% ethanol. This QS-promoted Ni2+ entry could not be amplified by other lipophilic Ca2+ antagonists, such as diltiazem (100 microM) and verapamil (100 microM). The results hence indicate that TET enhanced Ni2+ entry (or permeabilization) elicited by QS treatment, but not other perturbations of the plasma membrane. We suggest that pore formation at the plasma membrane, a consequence of QS-cholesterol interaction, can be specifically enhanced by TET. Also, a comparative study of the effects of TET and its very close analogues, hernandezine and berbamine, reveals that the methoxyl group at the R2 position of TET appears to be crucial in enhancing QS-promoted Ni2+ entry.     

Multi-domain architecture for policy management inumts ip multimedia subsystem

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) offers IP-based multimedia applications and services with end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee. The key component providing these services is the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that uses Service-Based Local Policy (SBLP) management for QoS control. To support end-to-end QoS, the UMTS IMS network should be scalable, reliable and flexible in policy deployment and enforcement, characteristics that are not found in single-domain policy architecture. A hybrid policy architecture is proposed, in which a hierarchical architecture is applied to the multi-domain environment in a single operator UMTS IMS network, while a peering architecture is employed in a multi-operator UMTS IMS network. The proposed multi-domain policy architecture potentially minimizes the session setup delay and policy exchange traffic while maximizing network scalability.