Changes in pain perception and pain-related somatosensory evoked potentials in humans produced by exposure to oscillating magnetic fields

cDNA selection was used to isolate coding sequences from cosmids mapping to the gene-rich telomeric region of human chromosome 21q. A novel cDNA, termed SMT3A, was isolated and mapped between the loci PFKL and D21S171, about 2.2 Mb proximal to the telomere. The predicted protein of 103 amino acids appears to be a homologue of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae SMT3 protein, whose gene was previously isolated as a suppressor of mutations in the MIF2 gene. The yeast MIF2 gene encodes an essential centromeric protein and shows homology to mammalian CENP-C, an integral component of active kinetochores. SMT3A was found to be highly homologous to two other recently isolated human genes, suggesting the presence of a new gene family. Homologous sequences were also found in protozoa, metazoa, and plants. Moreover, all predicted proteins show significant homology to ubiquitin. The proposed role of yeast SMT3 as centromeric protein and the strong evolutionary conservation of the SMT3A gene suggest an involvement of the encoded protein in the function and/or structure of the eukaryotic kinetochore.     

Joint clock recovery and baseband combining for the diversity radiochannel

Multipath fading is one of the major impairments encountered in terrestrial digital radio. A common countermeasure to limit the outage time due to multipath is the space diversity technique, which takes its effectiveness from the low correlation between the field samples of two well separated antennas. A very simple and effective blind receiver is proposed for the diversity radio channel. The novelty of the present study is the application of the constant modulus algorithm to joint clock recovery and baseband combining. The effectiveness of our proposal relies upon the synergic action of clock recovery and adaptive baseband combining, which allows optimal equalization of the two-ray diversity channel     

Advanced signal-processing algorithms for energy-efficient wirelesscommunications

Substantial progress has been made in the receiver signal-processing algorithms for wireless communications to minimize the requirements on signal-to-noise (and/or interference) power ratio and computational complexities for the same quality of service. In cellular infrastructure systems, one of the key system design objectives in the base stations is to maximize the receiver sensitivity, so that the required signal level from the mobile stations can be minimized. The use of advance signal-processing algorithms, based on maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, iterative (turbo) channel estimation, equalization, and decoding, allows for a reduction of the required transmitter power by one-third to one-half. Lower computational complexities in the terminals, which implies a reduced power drain on the digital circuits, can be achieved by using techniques that adapt the state complexity of the receiver to the propagation channel. We give an in-depth review of these algorithms, and discuss their performance and implementation requirements     

Nonparametric trellis equalization in the presence of non-Gaussian interference

We consider the problem of trellis equalization of the intersymbol interference channel in the presence of thermal noise and cochannel interference (CCI). Conventional maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) and maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) trellis equalizers treat the sum of noise and interference as additive white Gaussian noise, while CCI is generally a colored non-Gaussian process. We propose a novel nonparametric approach based on the estimation of the probability density function of the noise-plus-interference. Given the availability of a limited volume of data, the density is estimated by kernel-smoothing techniques. The use of a whitening filter in the presence of temporally colored disturbance is also addressed. Simulation results are provided for the global system for mobile communications (GSM), showing a significant performance improvement with respect to the equalizer based on the Gaussian assumption. Major advantages of the proposed strategy are its intrinsic robustness and general applicability to those cases where accurate modeling of the interference is difficult or a model is not available.     

Travel routes to remote ocean targets reveal the map sense resolution for a marine migrant

How animals navigate across the ocean to isolated targets remains perplexing greater than 150 years since this question was considered by Charles Darwin. To help solve this long-standing enigma, we considered the likely resolution of any map sense used in migration, based on the navigational performance across different scales (tens to thousands of kilometres). We assessed navigational performance using a unique high-resolution Fastloc-GPS tracking dataset for post-breeding hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) migrating relatively short distances to remote, isolated targets on submerged banks in the Indian Ocean. Individuals often followed circuitous paths (mean straightness index = 0.54, range 0.14–0.93, s.d. = 0.23, n = 22), when migrating short distances (mean beeline distance to target = 106 km, range 68.7–178.2 km). For example, one turtle travelled 1306.2 km when the beeline distance to the target was only 176.4 km. When off the beeline to their target, turtles sometimes corrected their course both in the open ocean and when encountering shallow water. Our results provide compelling evidence that hawksbill turtles only have a relatively crude map sense in the open ocean. The existence of widespread foraging and breeding areas on isolated oceanic sites points to target searching in the final stages of migration being common in sea turtles.     

Estimation of the output error statistics of space-time equalization in an antenna array EGPRS receiver with soft-decision decoding

The use of antenna arrays can help combat cochannel interference (CCI) in wireless cellular systems. In this paper, we consider an enhanced general packet radio service diversity receiver based on least squares spatio-temporal equalization and soft-decision decoding in the presence of decision feedback and/or asynchronous CCI. We compare known and novel estimators of the error mean and variance at the output of the deterministic space-time equalizer. The collected simulation data indicate that the estimation of the error mean and variance is critical to the performance of soft-in/hard-out Viterbi decoding in the presence of nonstationary input disturbance. Moreover, the use of short-term error statistics provides receiver performance gains of up to 15-20 dB in terms of signal-to-interference ratio, with respect to the use of burst statistics based on the training sequence midamble and tentative decisions on the payload symbols.     

Movements of migrating green turtles in relation to AVHRR derived sea surface temperature

Previous studies have shown that for some populations of marine turtle, individuals move along narrow migration corridors in the open ocean. It has been suggested that these migration corridors may correspond with nearsurface oceanographic features that can be detected by remote sensing. This idea is examined by superimposing the tracks of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) migrating from Ascension Island to Brazil, on sea surface temperature (SST) data derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images. The turtles did not follow specific isotherms during migration nor make turns en-route where specific thermal cues were encountered. These results suggest that for this population, SST plays a minimal role in influencing the exact route that individuals follow.