Triple-frequency planar monopole antenna for side-feed communication device on GSM/DCS/PCS operation

A novel side-feed planar monopole antenna capable of triple-frequency operation at about 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz is presented. The planar monopole antenna occupies a small area of 6/spl times/31 mm, and is easily made using thin copper. The planar monopole antenna can be side-fed and mounted perpendicularly to the main circuit board of a communication device so that it offers a novel design with a free degree of feed point so as to save device space, resulting in a low profile to the system ground plane. In addition, the obtained impedance bandwidths of the proposed antenna at about 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz can cover the GSM (890-960 MHz), DCS (1710-1880 MHz) and PCS (1850-1990 MHz) bands.     

Application of neural networks to prediction of phase transport characteristics in high-pressure two-phase turbulent bubbly flows

The phase transport phenomenon of the high-pressure two-phase turbulent bubbly flow involves complicated interfacial interactions of the mass, momentum, and energy transfer processes between phases, revealing that an enormous effort is required in characterizing the liquid–gas flow behavior. Nonetheless, the instantaneous information of bubbly flow properties is often desired for many industrial applications. This investigation aims to demonstrate the successful use of neural networks in the real-time determination of two-phase flow properties at elevated pressures. Three back-propagation neural networks, trained with the simulation results of a comprehensive theoretical model, are established to predict the transport characteristics (specifically the distributions of void-fraction and axial liquid–gas velocities) of upward turbulent bubbly pipe flows at pressures covering 3.5–7.0 MPa. Comparisons of the predictions with the test target vectors indicate that the averaged root-mean-squared (RMS) error for each one of three back-propagation neural networks is within 4.59%. In addition, this study appraises the effects of different network parameters, including the number of hidden nodes, the type of transfer function, the number of training pairs, the learning rate-increasing ratio, the learning rate-decreasing ratio, and the momentum value, on the training quality of neural networks.     

Analysis of flip-chip packaging challenges on copper/low-k interconnects

An interfacial-fracture-mechanics-based simulation methodology has been developed to study the flip-chip packaging effect on the copper/low-k structures. Multilevel submodeling techniques have been used to bridge the scale difference between the flip-chip packages and the metal/dielectric stacks. To achieve a smaller feature size and higher speed in future chips, SiO/sub 2/ can be replaced with low-k dielectric material in all via and trench layers or the number of metal layers can be increased. The effect of both packaging options has been evaluated. With either option, the future flip-chip copper/low-k packages are facing higher possibilities of adhesive or cohesive failure near the low-k interface. This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the increased risk, thus providing guidelines to the next level of low-k flip-chip packages.     

Cyt-C Mediated Mitochondrial Pathway Plays an Important Role in Oocyte Apoptosis in Ricefield Eel (Monopterus albus)

Apoptosis plays a key role in the effective removal of excessive and defective germ cells, which is essential for sequential hermaphroditism and sex change in vertebrates. The ricefield eel, Monopterus albus is a protogynous hermaphroditic fish that undergoes a sequential sex change from female to male. Previous studies have demonstrated that apoptosis is involved in sex change in M. albus. However, the apoptotic signaling pathway is unclear. In the current study, we explored the underlying mechanism of apoptosis during gonadal development and focused on the role of the mitochondrial apoptosis signaling pathway in sex change in M. albus. Flow cytometry was performed to detect apoptosis in gonads at five sexual stages and ovary tissues exposed to hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in vitro. Then the expression patterns of key genes and proteins in the mitochondrial pathway, death receptor pathway and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) pathway were examined. The results showed that the apoptosis rate was significantly increased in the early intersexual stage and then decreased with the natural sex change from female to male. Quantitative real-time PCR revealed that bax, tnfr1, and calpain were mainly expressed in the five stages. ELISA demonstrated that the relative content of cytochrome-c (cyt-c) in the mitochondrial pathway was significantly higher than that of caspase8 and caspase12, with a peak in the early intersexual stage, while the levels of caspase8 and caspase12 peaked in the late intersexual stage. Interestingly, the Pearson’s coefficient between cyt-c and the apoptosis rate was 0.705, which suggests that these factors are closely related during the gonadal development of M. albus. Furthermore, the cyt-c signal was found to be increased in the intersexual stage by immunohistochemistry. After incubation with H₂O₂, the mRNA expression of mitochondrial pathway molecules such as bax, apaf-1, and caspase3 increased in ovary tissues. In conclusion, the present results suggest that the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway may play a more important role than the other apoptotic pathways in sex change in M. albus.     

Expression Patterns and Gonadotropin Regulation of the TGF-β II Receptor (Bmpr2) during Ovarian Development in the Ricefield Eel Monopterus albus

Bmpr2 plays a central role in the regulation of reproductive development in mammals, but its role during ovarian development in fish is still unclear. To ascertain the function of bmpr2 in ovarian development in the ricefield eel, we isolated and characterized the bmpr2 cDNA sequence; the localization of Bmpr2 protein was determined by immunohistochemical staining; and the expression patterns of bmpr2 in ovarian tissue incubated with FSH and hCG in vitro were analyzed. The full-length bmpr2 cDNA was 3311 bp, with 1061 amino acids encoded. Compared to other tissues, bmpr2 was abundantly expressed in the ovary and highly expressed in the early yolk accumulation (EV) stages of the ovary. In addition, a positive signal for Bmpr2 was detected in the cytoplasm of oocytes in primary growth (PG) and EV stages. In vitro, the expression level of gdf9, the ligand of bmpr2, in the 10 ng/mL FSH treatment group was significantly higher after incubation for 4 h than after incubation for different durations. However, bmpr2 expression in the 10 ng/mL FSH treatment group at 2 h, 4 h and 10 h was significantly lower. Importantly, the expression level of bmpr2 and gdf9 in the 100 IU/mL hCG group had similar changes that were significantly decreased at 4 h and 10 h. In summary, Bmpr2 might play a pivotal role in ovarian growth in the ricefield eel, and these results provide a better understanding of the function of bmpr2 in ovarian development and the basic data for further exploration of the regulatory mechanism of gdf9 in oocyte development.     

Brain MR images segmentation using statistical ratio: mapping between watershed and competitive Hopfield clustering network algorithms

Conventional watershed segmentation methods invariably produce over-segmented images due to the presence of noise or local irregularities in the source images. In this paper, a robust medical image segmentation technique is proposed, which combines watershed segmentation and the competitive Hopfield clustering network (CHCN) algorithm to minimize undesirable over-segmentation. In the proposed method, a region merging method is presented, which is based on employing the region adjacency graph (RAG) to improve the quality of watershed segmentation. The relation of inter-region similarities is then investigated using image mapping in the watershed and CHCN images to determine more appropriate region merging. The performance of the proposed technique is presented through quantitative and qualitative validation experiments on benchmark images. Significant and promising segmentation results were achieved on brain phantom simulated data.     

海洋数据质量检验方案中残差优化选择算法磁

随着信息化的快速发展,海洋数据的获取手段变得多种多样,海洋数据的“量”急剧增大,如何保证海洋大数据的质量问题成为热点。抽样检验是一个较成熟的课题,但适用于海洋数据特性的抽样方案研究较少。结合海洋数据的特点,利用 Skyline 的思想,提出了分批排序的优化抽样检验方案选择算法。通过各抽样检验方案残差的 Skyline 集合,选择优化的质量检验方案,提高海洋数据质量检验精度的同时保证海洋数据的检验费用。     

三维模型的二维矢量化机制的研究与实现

论述了三维模型二维图形矢量化的必要性,详细描述了一种三维模型的二维矢量化机制,包括三维模型的一致化建模方式以及模型的组织与分层聚合方法,并对以往的隐藏几何元素消除算法做出改进,使其适应三维空间曲面的情况。