Modeling and Analysis of a Long Thin Conducting Stripline

A long thin conducting stripline embedded in a dielectric and centered between two large conducting plates, i.e., the stripline environment, is considered. The stripline is modeled as infinitely long, infinitely thin, and perfectly conducting by first considering a stripline of finite length, thickness, and conductivity in a dielectric layer. Starting from Maxwell's equations and assuming that the current on the stripline is a propagating wave in length direction, asymptotic expressions for the fields inside and in the neighbourhood of the stripline are deduced. These expressions are used to model the stripline in the stripline environment, which leads to a boundary-value problem for the electric potential. This problem is solved by two different approaches, leading to integral equations for the current and for an auxiliary function describing the electric potential. A relation between the current and the auxiliary function is deduced, which is used to obtain asymptotic expressions for current and impedance. Results are compared with a numerical solution of the integral equation for the current and with results in literature.     

Strategies to improve the performance of very low bit rate speech coders and application to a variable rate 1.2 kb/s codec

This paper presents several strategies to improve the performance of very low bit rate speech coders and describes a speech codec that incorporates these strategies and operates at an average bit rate of 1.2 kb/s. The encoding algorithm is based on several improvements in a mixed multiband excitation (MMBE) linear predictive coding (LPC) structure. A switched-predictive vector quantiser technique that outperforms previously reported schemes is adopted to encode the LSF parameters. Spectral and sound specific low rate models are used in order to achieve high quality speech at low rates. An MMBE approach with three sub-bands is employed to encode voiced frames, while fricatives and stops modelling and synthesis techniques are used for unvoiced frames. This strategy is shown to provide good quality synthesised speech, at a bit rate of only 0.4 kb/s for unvoiced frames. To reduce coding noise and improve decoded speech, spectral envelope restoration combined with noise reduction (SERNR) postfilter is used. The contributions of the techniques described in this paper are separately assessed and then combined in the design of a low bit rate codec that is evaluated against the North American Mixed Excitation Linear Prediction (MELP) coder. The performance assessment is carried out in terms of the spectral distortion of LSF quantisation, mean opinion score (MOS), A/B comparison tests and the ITU-T P.862 perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) standard. Assessment results show that the improved methods for LSF quantisation, sound specific modelling and synthesis and the new postfiltering approach can significantly outperform previously reported techniques. Further results also indicate that a system combining the proposed improvements and operating at 1.2 kb/s, is comparable (slightly outperforming) a MELP coder operating at 2.4 kb/s. For tandem connection situations, the proposed system is clearly superior to the MELP coder.     

Linear demosaicing inspired by the human visual system.

There is an analogy between single-chip color cameras and the human visual system in that these two systems acquire only one limited wavelength sensitivity band per spatial location. We have exploited this analogy, defining a model that characterizes a one-color per spatial position image as a coding into luminance and chrominance of the corresponding three colors per spatial position image. Luminance is defined with full spatial resolution while chrominance contains subsampled opponent colors. Moreover, luminance and chrominance follow a particular arrangement in the Fourier domain, allowing for demosaicing by spatial frequency filtering. This model shows that visual artifacts after demosaicing are due to aliasing between luminance and chrominance and could be solved using a preprocessing filter. This approach also gives new insights for the representation of single-color per spatial location images and enables formal and controllable procedures to design demosaicing algorithms that perform well compared to concurrent approaches, as demonstrated by experiments.     

Application du recuit simulé à la synthèse d’antennes en réseau constituées d’éléments annulaires imprimés

This publication consists of an analysis and a synthesis by the amplitude law of linear and planar ring printed antennas array. The analysis of the structure is based on the modified cavity model which allows taking into account the fringing fields effects. The synthesis problem is solved by the simulated annealing method based on a random process research controlled by temperature parameter. The feeding network amplitude permitting to produce an optimal radiation pattern is then given. Various synthesis results for linear and planar arrays are presented.     

An integrated system to remote monitor and control anaerobic wastewater treatment plants through the internet.

The TELEMAC project brings new methodologies from the Information and Science Technologies field to the world of water treatment. TELEMAC offers an advanced remote management system which adapts to most of the anaerobic wastewater treatment plants that do not benefit from a local expert in wastewater treatment. The TELEMAC system takes advantage of new sensors to better monitor the process dynamics and to run automatic controllers that stabilise the treatment plant, meet the depollution requirements and provide a biogas quality suitable for cogeneration. If the automatic system detects a failure which cannot be solved automatically or locally by a technician, then an expert from the TELEMAC Control Centre is contacted via the internet and manages the problem.     

Programmable analogue VLSI implementation for asymmetric sigmoid neural activation function and its derivative

A new CMOS VLSI implementation of an asymmetric programmable sigmoid neural activation function, as well as of its derivative, is presented. It consists of two coupled PMOS and NMOS differential pairs with different programmable bias currents that set the upper and lower limits of the sigmoid. The circuit works in the weak inversion region, for low power consumption and exponential envelope, or in strong inversion to achieve higher speeds. The results obtained from the theoretical transfer function, and from the simulations of the circuit implemented in AMI's 0.35 /spl mu/m technology, show a very good match.     

Stimulation of negative magnetoresistance by an electric field and light in silicon doped with boron and manganese

It is experimentally ascertained that light stimulates the negative magnetoresistance observed in a high electric field in silicon doped with boron and manganese. The optimum conditions (the electric field, temperature, illumination, and resistivity of the material) for observation of the largest magnitude of negative magnetoresistance in (Si:B):Mn are determined. The dependence of the negative magnetoresistance on the concentration of compensating impurity is established.     

Evidence of High Vertical Wave-Number Behavior in a Continuously Stratified Reservoir: Boadella, Spain

High vertical wave-number modes clearly dominate the internal wave field during the stratification period in Boadella reservoir in northeast Spain. In this period, the extraction of hypolimnetic water, due to summer irrigation, brought the surface level down by 6 m in one month and the epilimnetic water progressively occupied the whole water column. The temperature profile, with the exception of a few meters at the surface layer, presented an almost constant temperature gradient of about 0.7°C/m. The period of the main vertical mode is 24 h with an amplitude of around 1 m. Thermistor chain records and meteorological data allow us to deduce that this mode is, at least, a third vertical mode forced by the wind, which normally has a typical periodicity of 24 h. However, when the wind changes direction from south to north, the circulation cells developed due to this forced nonstationary oscillation are destroyed. When this occurs, the Bulk Richardson number is Rib ～ 1. Similar vertical structures as a response to wind forcing should be expected in similar systems, although this has not been reported in the literature.     

Integration of prior knowledge of measurement noise in kernel density classification

Samples can be measured with different precisions and reliabilities in different experiments, or even within the same experiment. These varying levels of measurement noise may deteriorate the performance of a pattern recognition system, if not treated with care. Here we seek to investigate the benefit of incorporating prior knowledge about measurement noise into system construction. We propose a kernel density classifier which integrates such prior knowledge. Instead of using an identical kernel for each sample, we transform the prior knowledge into a distinct kernel for each sample. The integration procedure is straightforward and easy to interpret. In addition, we show how to estimate the diverse measurement noise levels in a real world dataset. Compared to the basic methods, the new kernel density classifier can give a significantly better classification performance. As expected, this improvement is more obvious for small sample size datasets and large number of features.     

生态平衡的伦理学意蕴解读

20世纪以来，人类采用技术工程治理、法律制裁和经济惩罚等措施，一定意义上改善了局部的生态环境，但是未能遏制住全球环境问题的恶化态势。生态危机的根本解决，关键在于人类自身必须进行深刻的利益观念和价值观念的变革。重新审视人与自然界的关系，对自然进行伦理关怀，寻求和建立以保护地球环境和人类生存与可持续发展的生态平衡理念。