PAPR Reduction of OFDM Signal via Custom Conic Optimized Iterative Adaptive Clipping and Filtering

High peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of OFDM reduces the transmitter power efficiency and increases the complication in hardware implementation. A number of techniques have been developed to minimize PAPR of OFDM. Among these techniques, iterative clipping and filtering (ICF) is an effective recent technique that produces significant results in minimizing PAPR. But, the major limitation of this approach is that it requires several iterations for minimizing PAPR. In order to overcome the above limitation, an optimization based ICF is used in this research work. An efficient custom optimized adaptive clipping and filtering technique is proposed. The proposed method shows a greater reduction in PAPR in lesser iterations with reduced out-of-band distortion and bit error rate when compared over classical clipping techniques. Moreover, the effects of oversampling on the performance of the proposed OFDM system are also evaluated.     

Impact of Morphology on Printed Contact Performance in Carbon Nanotube Thin‐Film Transistors

Silver nanoparticles (NPs) are the most widely used conductive material throughout the printed electronics space due to their high conductivity and low cost. However, when interfacing with other prominent printed materials, such as semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in thin‐film transistors (TFTs), silver is suboptimal when compared to more expensive or less conductive materials. Consequently, there would be significant value to improving the interface of printed silver to CNT films. In this work, the impact of nanostructure morphology on the electrical properties of printed silver and nanotube junctions in CNT‐TFTs is investigated. Three distinct silver morphologies (NPs, nanoflakes – NFs, and nanowires – NWs) are explored with top‐ and bottom‐contact configurations for each. The NF morphology in a top‐contact configuration is found to yield the best electrical interface to CNTs, resulting in an average contact resistance of 1.2 MΩ ? µm. Beyond electrical performance, several trade‐offs in morphology selection are revealed, including print resolution and process temperature. While NF inks produce the best interfaces, NP inks produce the smallest features, and NW inks are compatible with low processing temperatures (<80 °C). These results outline the trade‐offs between silver contact morphologies in CNT‐TFTs and show that contact morphology selection can be tailored for specific applications.     

Pneumatic Networks for Soft Robotics that Actuate Rapidly

Soft robots actuated by inflation of a pneumatic network (a “pneu‐net”) of small channels in elastomeric materials are appealing for producing sophisticated motions with simple controls. Although current designs of pneu‐nets achieve motion with large amplitudes, they do so relatively slowly (over seconds). This paper describes a new design for pneu‐nets that reduces the amount of gas needed for inflation of the pneu‐net, and thus increases its speed of actuation. A simple actuator can bend from a linear to a quasi‐circular shape in 50 ms when pressurized at ΔP = 345 kPa. At high rates of pressurization, the path along which the actuator bends depends on this rate. When inflated fully, the chambers of this new design experience only one‐tenth the change in volume of that required for the previous design. This small change in volume requires comparably low levels of strain in the material at maximum amplitudes of actuation, and commensurately low rates of fatigue and failure. This actuator can operate over a million cycles without significant degradation of performance. This design for soft robotic actuators combines high rates of actuation with high reliability of the actuator, and opens new areas of application for them.     

Heterogeneous Catalytic Aziridination of Styrene Using Transition-Metal-Exchanged Zeolite Y

Hydrogen for fuel cells can be produced by reforming hydrocarbons. The H₂-rich reformate typically contains about 1 mol% CO which will poison the anode of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The CO concentration can be reduced by preferential oxidation (PROX) using near-stoichiometric amounts of O₂. The conversion of CO should be over 99% while minimizing oxidation of H₂. Supported Pt catalysts with and without promotion by Ce were compared for the catalytic oxidation of CO by O₂ in a H₂ stream. With unsupported Pt catalysts, selectivity (to CO₂ as opposed to H₂O) was highest at low temperatures and low O₂/CO ratios, however conversion was low. Addition of Ce significantly improved CO conversion under these conditions.     

Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 Escape Mutants to a Pair of Neutralizing Antibodies Targeting the RBD and the NTD

Mutations in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 can lead to evasion from neutralizing antibodies and affect the efficacy of passive and active immunization strategies. Immunization of mice harboring an entire set of human immunoglobulin variable region gene segments allowed to identify nine neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, which either belong to a cluster of clonally related RBD or NTD binding antibodies. To better understand the genetic barrier to emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants resistant to these antibodies, escape mutants were selected in cell culture to one antibody from each cluster and a combination of the two antibodies. Three independently derived escape mutants to the RBD antibody harbored mutations in the RBD at the position T478 or S477. These mutations impaired the binding of the RBD antibodies to the spike protein and conferred resistance in a pseudotype neutralization assay. Although the binding of the NTD cluster antibodies were not affected by the RBD mutations, the RBD mutations also reduced the neutralization efficacy of the NTD cluster antibodies. The mutations found in the escape variants to the NTD antibody conferred resistance to the NTD, but not to the RBD cluster antibodies. A variant resistant to both antibodies was more difficult to select and only emerged after longer passages and higher inoculation volumes. VOC carrying the same mutations as the ones identified in the escape variants were also resistant to neutralization. This study further underlines the rapid emergence of escape mutants to neutralizing monoclonal antibodies in cell culture and indicates the need for thorough investigation of escape mutations to select the most potent combination of monoclonal antibodies for clinical use.     

Preparation and characterization of lyophilised egg PC liposomes incorporating curcumin and evaluation of its activity against colorectal cancer cell lines

Curcumin has been associated with the treatment of various diseases in traditional medicine, among them cancer. The major problems that prevent its approval as therapeutic agent are its low water solubility and its relatively low in vivo bioavailability. Liposomes are considered as effective drug carriers because of their ability to solubilize hydrophobic compounds and to alter their pharmacokinetic properties. The purpose of this study was the development of lyophilised liposomal curcumin fully characterized in terms of its physical properties [(zeta-potential, size, size distribution and Polydispercity index (PI)], and to evaluate its in vitro cytotoxic against colorectal cancer cell lines in a short-term and in a long-term (clonogenic) assay. Curcumin was incorporated in egg-phosphatidylcholine (EPC) liposomes at a drug to lipid molar ratio 1:14 achieving high incorporation efficiency close to 85%. The liposomal curcumin was lyophilized preserving thus its stability. The reconstitution of the formulation resulted in the original liposomal suspension. The release in FBS showed a plateau near 14% at 96 hours of incubation. The in vitro studies against colorectal cancer cell lines have shown that liposomes improve the activity of curcumin especially in the long-term assay and the liposomal formulation found to be more potent against HCT116 and HCT15, cell lines which express the MDR phenotype. EPC liposomal curcumin in a molar ratio of curcumin/EPC 1:14 has shown improved cytotoxic activity versus free curcumin against colorectal cancer cell lines. In vivo studies based on the recent findings are in progress in our laboratory.     

A type safe state abstraction for coordination in Java-like languages

The state of a concurrent object, intended as some abstraction over the values of the fields of the object, usually determines its coordination behavior. Therefore, state is always in the programmer’s mind, even though implicitly. We suggest a feature for Java-like languages, which makes the state of a concurrent object explicit and supports the expression of the object’s behavior depending on the state it is currently in. Namely, an object will be in one of the states declared in its class. The state determines the presence of fields and methods. State transition statements explicitly change the state of an object, and thus change the availability of fields and methods. When a thread calls a method which is declared in the object’s class but absent from its current state, it waits, until the state of the object changes to a state which does contain that method. This directly expresses coordination. We claim that this feature makes it easier to understand and develop concurrent programs, and substantiate our claim through the discussion of some popular examples of concurrent programs written using this feature.We develop a type and effect system, which guarantees that, during execution of a method invoked on a concurrent object ${\tt o}$ : (1) No attempt will be made to access fields not available in the current state of ${\tt o}$ , and (2) No method invoked on a receiver (syntactically) different from ${\tt this}$ may cause the invocation of a method on ${\tt o}$ . The latter guarantee helps to enforce the former and prevents a family of accidental violations of the intended coordination protocol.     

Acceleration of TAA-Induced Liver Fibrosis by Stress Exposure Is Associated with Upregulation of Nerve Growth Factor and Glycopattern Deviations

Liver fibrosis results from many chronic injuries and may often progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In fact, up to 90% of HCC arise in a cirrhotic liver. Conversely, stress is implicated in liver damage, worsening disease outcome. Hence, stress could play a role in disrupting liver homeostasis, a concept that has not been fully explored. Here, in a murine model of TAA-induced liver fibrosis we identified nerve growth factor (NGF) to be a crucial regulator of the stress-induced fibrogenesis signaling pathway as it activates its receptor p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR), increasing liver damage. Additionally, blocking the NGF decreased liver fibrosis whereas treatment with recombinant NGF accelerated the fibrotic process to a similar extent than stress challenge. We further show that the fibrogenesis induced by stress is characterized by specific changes in the hepatoglycocode (increased β1,6GlcNAc-branched complex N-glycans and decreased core 1 O-glycans expression) which are also observed in patients with advanced fibrosis compared to patients with a low level of fibrosis. Our study facilitates an understanding of stress-induced liver injury and identify NGF signaling pathway in early stages of the disease, which contributes to the established fibrogenesis.     

Evaluation of a novel 8-channel RX coil for speech production MRI at 0.55 T

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine - Speech production MRI benefits from lower magnetic fields due to reduced off-resonance effects at air-tissue interfaces and from the...     

Adequacy of first mode shape differences for damage identification of cantilever structures using neural networks

Neural Computing and Applications - Damage identification of structures has attracted attention of researchers due to sudden collapse of in-service structures. Modal parameters and their...