Rorschach cognitive developmental indices of mentally retarded persons: a comparison with scores on Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children-revised

The complete mechanism by which pathogenic mtDNA mutations cause cellular pathophysiology and in some cases cell death is unclear. Oxidant stress is especially toxic to excitable nerve and muscle cells, cells that are often affected in mitochondrial disease. The sensitivity of cells bearing the LHON, MELAS, and MERRF mutations to oxidant stress was determined. All were significantly more sensitive to H2O2 exposure than their nonmutant cybrid controls, the order of sensitivity was MELAS > LHON > MERRF > controls. Depletion of Ca2+ from the medium protected all cell lines from oxidant stress, consistent with the hypothesis that death induced by oxidant stress is Ca(2+)-dependent. A potential downstream target of Ca2+ is the mitochondrial permeability transition, MPT, which is inhibited by cyclosporin A. Treatment of MELAS, LHON, and MERRF cells with cyclosporin A caused significant rescue from oxidant exposure, and in each case significantly greater rescue of mutant than control cells. The pronounced oxidant-sensitivity of mutant cells, and their protection by Ca2+ depletion and CsA, has potential implications for both the pathophysiological mechanism and therapy of these mitochondrial genetic diseases.     

The constrained total least squares technique and its applicationsto harmonic superresolution

The constrained total least squares (CTLS) method is a natural extension of TLS to the case when the noise components of the coefficients are algebraically related. The CTLS technique is developed, and some of its applications to superresolution harmonic analysis are presented. The CTLS problem is reduced to an unconstrained minimization problem over a small set of variables. A perturbation analysis of the CTLS solution is derived, and from it the root mean-square error (RMSE) of the CTLS solution, which is valid for small noise levels, is obtained in closed form. The complex version of the Newton method is derived and applied to determine the CTLS solution. It is also shown that the CTLS problem is equivalent to a constrained parameter maximum-likelihood problem. The CTLS technique is applied to estimate the frequencies of sinusoids in white noise and the angle of arrival of narrowband wavefronts at a linear uniform array. In both cases the CTLS method shows superior or similar accuracy to other advanced techniques     

LMSMVE: a program for least median of squares regression and robust distances.

The program LMSMVE performs robust regression analysis by using the method of the least median of squares. It also computes robust distances to locate leverage points, that is, outliers with respect to the set of independent variables. LMSMVE constructs plots of least median of squares residuals against robust distances. Both methods can tolerate up to half the data being outliers before they fail to give results that describe the bulk of the data. A complete system that operates directly on SYSTAT files is available for the IBM PC and compatibles; it includes a utility that converts ASCII files to SYSTAT format.     

The absorption of deuterium by carbon-based facing materials on components in contact with the plasma in a thermonuclear reactor

Conclusions The conditions have been proposed for performing modeling experiments making it possible to predict the accumulation of hydrogen isotopes in carbon materials which are in contact with a tokamak plasma acting as a source of particles having a flux density of between 3×10¹⁶ and 3×10¹⁹ cm⁻²·sec⁻¹. By analyzing the reemission fluxes formed in the stopping zone of the particles implanted from the plasma it is suggested that the action of the plasma as regards the sorption of hydrogen is identical to that of annealing the material in an atmosphere of hydrogen isotopes at a pressure of 1–10³ Pa and a temperature of 1200–1700 K. The quantity of absorbed deuterium in POCO, UAM, RGT-B, and USB increases as the temperature is lowered and the pressure is raised (1500 K, 0.66 Pa→1200 K, 133 Pa). As regards their sorption of deuterium, POCO, UAM, and RGT behave similarly. There is a tendency for the sorption capacity of materials doped with boron to be reduced. In a class of itself is the isotropic material USB, whose sorption capacity is a factor of 10–100 lower than that of undoped graphite. The introduction into these materials of radiation-induced defects (T=300 K) by means of ion irradiation in the range 0.1–1 dpa results in a continuous rise in the deuterium sorption capacity by a factor of 10–100 (up to 10⁻² atomic fraction). The USB graphite demonstrates record low increments in the sorption capacity. In the fluence range identical to 1–10 dpa the sorption capacity of carbon materials for hydrogen is almost constant. The process of the sorption of hydrogen isotopes can be described as the filling of two ensembles of traps, deep traps which are difficult to access and readily accessible Langmuir traps. In the RGT-B materials containing 0.1% of boron, the traps introduced by irradiation with 300-keV neon ions vanish on annealing in a vacuum (T=1800 K, t=1 min). Institute of Physical Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences. SINTEZ Scientific and Technical Center, Scientific-Research Institute of Electrophysical Apparatus. Graphite Scientific-Research Institute. National Scientific Center, Kharkov Physicotechnical Institute. Translated from Atomnaya énergiya, Vol. 82, No. 6, pp. 448–464, June, 1997.     

Reactor design considerations for MOCVD growth of thin films

Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) performance is optimized for growing titanium dioxide (TiO₂) thin films. Different gas flow directions and susceptor rotation, along with reactor geometry and shape variations are considered. Gravity proves to be an important parameter in changing the flow pattern in the reaction chamber. However, since film uniformity is not improved by changing the flow direction, modifying the reactor geometry is also proposed. Among the different geometrical parameters, the susceptor-inlet distance, inlet tube diameter, and susceptor size are considered. To minimize the occurrence of recirculation cells in the reaction chamber, modifications in the reactor shape are also suggested. Acceptable results are achieved by changing the cylindrical reactor to a diamond shape     

Four-wire current-regulated PWM voltage converter

Shunt active power filters are connected in parallel with the electricity supply network. If the AC mains has a neutral conductor, it is desirable to compensate the mains harmonic currents zero-sequence components. This can be achieved with a four-wire pulsewidth modulation voltage converter connected to the AC mains. In this case, the three-phase and the neutral AC currents must be controlled. A generalization of the space-vector-based current controller in the αβo coordinate system is presented in this paper. With this current controller, all the current harmonic systems of positive, negative, and zero sequence can be injected by the converter and, thus, compensated on the AC mains. The system is also useful to compensate unbalanced currents of fundamental frequency. A useful benefit of this system is that it is possible to control the converter four-wire currents with equal hysteresis errors. Simulation and experimental results are presented     

Improved strained HEMT characteristics using double-heterojunctionIn0.65Ga0.35As/In0.52Al0.48As design

The DC and microwave properties of strained In_0.65Ga _0.35As/In₀₅₂Al_0.48As HEMTs (high electron-mobility transistors) with double-heterojunction design are presented. The high sheet carrier density and good carrier confinement give rise to excellent device performance with very low output conductance. For 1×150-μm² long-gate HEMTs, the measured cutoff frequency f_T and maximum frequency of oscillation f_max are as high as 37 and 66 GHz, respectively     

Amore Address Mapping with Overlapped Rotating Entries

A memory management unit that supports demand paging is implemented with standard logic and fast-access RAM chips, resulting in much faster address translation that that provided by the standard Motorola MC68451 MMU.     

Correlation of the impact elasticity of cast steels with their coercive force

The character of the correlation of the impact elasticity of cast and subsequently normalized and thermostrengthened steels 08XΓΦЛ and 08XΓTЛ with their coercive force is studied. Such a correlation in the form of a curve characterized by a maximum is observed for both low-carbon and low-alloyed hot-rolled steels.