An approximation by neural networkswith a fixed weight

Neural networks are widely used in many applications including astronomical physics,image processing, recognition, robotics, and automated target tracking, etc. Their ability to approximate arbitrary functions is the main reason for this popularity. In this paper, we discuss the constructive approximation on the whole real line by a neural networks with a sigmoidal activation function and a fixed weight. Using the convolution method, we show neural network approximation with a fixed weight to a continuous function on a compact interval. Also, we demonstrate a computational work that shows good agreement with theory.     

Inhibitory effect of sowthistle (Ixeris dentata) on development and expression of behavioral locomotor sensitization to nicotine in rats

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of sowthistle (Ixeris dentata, IXD) on development and expression of nicotine-induced locomotor sensitization and underlying neuronal activation reflected by c-Fos expression in rats. Rats were pretreated with IXD 30 min before a daily injection of nicotine during an 8-day development phase and then challenged with nicotine after a 6-day withdrawal period. In another set of experiments, same IXD doses were administered once 30 min before nicotine challenge. Daily IXD treatment during development phase was not effective in blocking nicotine-induced locomotor sensitization in rats. However, a single IXD treatment after the development and withdrawal periods of nicotine sensitization significantly alleviated sensitized locomotor behavior on day 15. These behavioral results were coincident with significant inhibition of nicotineinduced c-Fos expression in the nucleus accumbens. These results indicated that IXD pretreatment significantly blocked the expression, but not the development of nicotine-induced locomotor sensitization in rats.     

Synthesis of the [Ga]-MFI under atmospheric pressure

The crystallization of the [Ga]-MFI was investigated as a function of synthesis time under atmospheric pressure. The molar composition of the reactants was 100SiO₂-Ga₂O₃-llNa₂O-llTPABr-3500H₂O. The crystallinity of the [Ga]-MFT was examined by using several analytical instruments, such as XRD, XPS, XRF, FT-IR, solid-statemas-NMR, DTG/DTA, and SEM. The [Ga]-MFI was successfully synthesized under atmospheric pressure at 97 ‡C in 72 h. It was found that the nucleation of the [Ga]-MFI took a quite long time, but the crystallization took place very fast. It is supposed that nucleation is the rate-controlling step in the [Ga]-MFI synthesis under atmospheric pressure. Consequently, if the induction period of the nucleation can be shortened, it would be possible to synthesize the [Ga]-MFI commercially under atmospheric pressure.     

Speech recognition in living rooms: Integrated speech enhancement and recognition system based on spatial,spectral and temporal modeling of sounds

Research on noise robust speech recognition has mainly focused on dealing with relatively stationary noise that may differ from the noise conditions in most living environments. In this paper, we introduce a recognition system that can recognize speech in the presence of multiple rapidly time-varying noise sources as found in a typical family living room. To deal with such severe noise conditions, our recognition system exploits all available information about speech and noise; that is spatial (directional), spectral and temporal information. This is realized with a model-based speech enhancement pre-processor, which consists of two complementary elements, a multi-channel speech–noise separation method that exploits spatial and spectral information, followed by a single channel enhancement algorithm that uses the long-term temporal characteristics of speech obtained from clean speech examples. Moreover, to compensate for any mismatch that may remain between the enhanced speech and the acoustic model, our system employs an adaptation technique that combines conventional maximum likelihood linear regression with the dynamic adaptive compensation of the variance of the Gaussians of the acoustic model. Our proposed system approaches human performance levels by greatly improving the audible quality of speech and substantially improving the keyword recognition accuracy.     

Crystallization of [Ga]-MFI Under Atmospheric Pressure

The crystallization of [Ga]-MFI was investigated as a function of synthesis time under atmospheric pressure. The molar composition of the reactants was 100SiO₂–Ga₂O₃–11Na₂O–11TPABr–3500H₂O. The crystallinity of [Ga]-MFI was examined using several analytical instruments, such as XRD, XPS, XRF, FT-IR, solid state MAS-NMR, and DTG/DTA. [Ga]-MFI was successfully synthesized under atmospheric pressure at 97°C in 72 h. It was found that the nucleation of [Ga]-MFI took quite a long time, but the crystallization took place very fast. It is supposed that the nucleation is the rate-controlling step in [Ga]-MFI synthesis under atmospheric pressure. Consequently, if the induction period of the nucleation can be shortened, it would be possible to synthesize [Ga]-MFI commercially under atmospheric pressure.     

Cricket-based robots

This article describes the development of an autonomous hybrid microrobot that uses legs for propulsion and support of the rear half of the body and a pair of wheels for support of the front half. McKibben artificial muscles actuate the legs, and compressed air is generated by an onboard power plant. Control is also onboard in the form of a PIC microcontroller, from Microchip Technology Inc., that controls the actuators through four three-way valves that are each made up of a pair of microelectromechanical system devices. Its motion resembles that of a cricket.     

Binding kinetics of monoclonal antibody using antigen-beta-galactosidase hybrid protein: application to measurement of peptide antigenicity

A simple method for determination of binding kinetics of a solid-phase antibody using antigen-beta-galactosidase hybrid protein was evaluated. To minimize conformational change of the antigen binding site of the antibody when directly binding to a microtiter plate, the microtiter plate was precoated with protein A. The binding and free antigen concentrations were directly obtained from the beta-galactosidase activity. This method can be used for analyses of the equilibrium dissociation constant (KD), and the association (Kass) and dissociation (Kdiss) rate constants. Peptide antigenicity was also analyzed by competitive ELISA using this method. Since both antigen-beta-galactosidase and the peptide used are localized in the fluid-phase, the proper affinity constant (KA) of the peptide can be estimated from the KD value of the antigen-beta-galactosidase-antibody interaction, and from the IC50 value of the peptide.     

The use of multiple antigenic peptide (MAP) in the immunodiagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus infection

In order to develop an ELISA system for the antibody detection of HIV-1 or HIV-2 infections, MAPs for HIV-1 gp41(584-618) and HIV-2 gp36(574-602) corresponding to the immunodominant regions of HIV-1 gp41 and HIV-2 gp36 were used as coating antigens in the ELISA. The MAPs were synthesized by the solid phase method using Fmoc-Lys(Fmoc)-OH and their molecular weights were confirmed by tricine gel electrophoresis. The MAPs reacted with all HIV positive sera (64 samples), but did not react with HIV negative sera (48 samples) obtained from healthy blood donors. The MAPs showed high sensitivity and specificity in anti-HIV 1/2 combo panel and anti-HIV-1 seroconversion panels. The results indicated that the ELISA system using synthetic MAPs of gp41(584-618) and gp36(574-602) as coating antigens can be used as an analytical system for the immunodiagnosis of HIV-1 or HIV-2 infections.     

A Framework for MPEG‐4 Contents Delivery over DMB

Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) is an upcoming standard in Korea used to provide mobile multimedia broadcasting service based on the Eureka‐147 Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) system. The current dominant multimedia coding standard, MPEG‐4, is foreseen to play an important role in forthcoming DMB services. However, the current approaches for transporting MPEG‐4 content over DMB networks are not optimized. To address this issue we propose a novel MPEG‐4 stream multiplexer, called M4SMux, which provides better stream multiplexing and delivery over DMB networks. M4SMux features an MPEG‐4 elementary‐stream interleaving mechanism that reduces the multiplexing overhead and a multiplex configuration mechanism that utilizes M4SLinkTable for easy content access. In addition, we propose an error correction method which enhances transport efficiency.     

Deconvolution in the presence of Doppler with application tospecular multipath parameter estimation

High-resolution multipath parameter estimates can be obtained through various deconvolution procedures, all of which-in the limit-rely on some form of inverse filtering. Although deconvolution in a multipath environment free from Doppler is well understood and well documented, this is not true for the case when motion of the multipath components relative to the receiver imposes a Doppler shift on the transmitted probing signal. This paper describes the effect of Doppler on a broad class of deconvolution methods by studying the effect of Doppler on the output of an inverse filter. It is shown that in the presence of Doppler, the deconvolution outputs are comprised chiefly of two signal-related functions, one of which may be designed in such a way as to be free from the range-Doppler coupling effects inherent in correlation processing. Knowledge of these two functions provides insight into the signal design issues relevant to deconvolution-based multipath parameter estimation systems and is useful in designing appropriate constraints and post-processing algorithms that may lead to an accurate extraction of the Doppler and delay parameters of the multipath channel. These results are applied to two known deconvolution methods: the method of projection onto convex sets (POCS) and the method of least squares (LS)