Cellular roles of kinesin and related proteins

Frequency response characteristics of six popular stethoscopes are reported for the higher frequency range (to 3000 Hz) to supplement equivalent measurements for the lower frequencies (35-1000 Hz) published previously. Spectra of the sounds of swallowing from the throat, transduced with an accelerometer, demonstrate important frequency composition in this higher range. Two stethoscope models were found to have superior transmission characteristics for use in cervical auscultation of swallowing sounds.     

Electron mobility enhancement in strained-Si n-typemetal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors

Enhanced performance is demonstrated in n-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors with channel regions formed by pseudomorphic growth of strained Si on relaxed Si_1-xGe_x. Standard MOS fabrication techniques were utilized, including thermal oxidation of the strained Si. Surface channel devices show low-field mobility enhancements of 80% at room temperature and 12% at 10 K, when compared to control devices fabricated in Czochralski Si. Similar enhancements are observed in the device transconductance. In addition, buried channel devices show peak room temperature mobilities about three times that of control devices     

Spontaneous regression of familial glioma of the optic nerve in a boy with suspected neurofibromatosis 1 (Recklinghausen''s disease)

A boy with a large intracranial glioma of the optic tract and probable neurofibromatosis of the first type was observed for 8 years since the age of 7 years. A series of MR scans was made over this period. A notable decrease of the tumor size was seen on its signals on the MR scans. This was paralleled by an improvement of the vision acuity, color field, and visual field on the involved eye. Patient's grandmother had an intracranial glioma of the optic nerve with a slight but stable decrease of the visual functions. The tumor shape in the grandmother and grandchild is remarkably similar. This finding in the grandmother and stability of her vision decreased from childhood permit us to propose that the tumor did not develop and even regressed with time.     

Mesh generation for confined fusion plasma simulation

XGC1 and M3D-C ¹ are two fusion plasma simulation codes being developed at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. XGC1 uses the particle-in-cell method to simulate gyrokinetic neoclassical physics and turbulence (Chang et al. Phys Plasmas 16(5):056108, 2009; Ku et al. Nucl Fusion 49:115021, 2009; Admas et al. J Phys 180(1):012036, 2009). M3D-\(C^1\) solves the two-fluid resistive magnetohydrodynamic equations with the \(C^1\) finite elements (Jardin J comput phys 200(1):133–152, 2004; Jardin et al. J comput Phys 226(2):2146–2174, 2007; Ferraro and Jardin J comput Phys 228(20):7742–7770, 2009; Jardin J comput Phys 231(3):832–838, 2012; Jardin et al. Comput Sci Discov 5(1):014002, 2012; Ferraro et al. Sci Discov Adv Comput, 2012; Ferraro et al. International sherwood fusion theory conference, 2014). This paper presents the software tools and libraries that were combined to form the geometry and automatic meshing procedures for these codes. Specific consideration has been given to satisfy the mesh configuration and element shape quality constraints of XGC1 and M3D-\(C^1\).     

Transform coding for hardware-accelerated volume rendering

Hardware-accelerated volume rendering using the GPU is now the standard approach for real-time volume rendering, although limited graphics memory can present a problem when rendering large volume data sets. Volumetric compression in which the decompression is coupled to rendering has been shown to be an effective solution to this problem; however, most existing techniques were developed in the context of software volume rendering, and all but the simplest approaches are prohibitive in a real-time hardware-accelerated volume rendering context. In this paper we present a novel block-based transform coding scheme designed specifically with real-time volume rendering in mind, such that the decompression is fast without sacrificing compression quality. This is made possible by consolidating the inverse transform with dequantization in such a way as to allow most of the reprojection to be precomputed. Furthermore, we take advantage of the freedom afforded by off-line compression in order to optimize the encoding as much as possible while hiding this complexity from the decoder. In this context we develop a new block classification scheme which allows us to preserve perceptually important features in the compression. The result of this work is an asymmetric transform coding scheme that allows very large volumes to be compressed and then decompressed in real-time while rendering on the GPU.     

A real-time vision module for interactive perceptual agents

Abstract. Interactive robotics demands real-time visual information about the environment. Real-time vision processing, however, places a heavy load on the robot's limited resources, which must accommodate multiple other processes running simultaneously. This paper describes a vision module capable of providing real-time information from ten or more operators while maintaining at least a 20-Hz frame rate and leaving sufficient processor time for a robot's other capabilities. The vision module uses a probabilistic scheduling algorithm to ensure both timely information flow and a fast frame capture. In addition, it tightly integrates the vision operators with control of a pan-tilt-zoom camera. The vision module makes its information available to other modules in the robot architecture through a shared memory structure. The information provided by the vision module includes the operator information along with a time stamp indicating information relevance. Because of this design, our robots are able to react in a timely manner to a wide variety of visual events.