Development of an animal model for across-herd genetic evaluation of number born alive in swine

An animal model and computer software were developed to conduct across-herd genetic evaluations using data from producers participating in the Sow Productivity Index program of the American Yorkshire Club. The final data set consisted of 61,596 litter records from 1986 to early 1990. The animal model included fixed contemporary group effects and random additive direct, service sire, permanent environmental, and residual effects. Additive genetic relationships among animals were included. A separate relationship matrix for service sires and their sires was also included. A data set similar to the Yorkshire field data was simulated to use in testing the animal model. The simulated data set consisted of 40 herds, each with 120 reproducing dams and either four or five sires. Six generations of simulated data were produced, resulting in 20,605 litter records. These records were then evaluated using the animal model for number of pigs born alive. Finally, correlations between the true breeding values from the simulation and the predicted breeding values were computed. The correlation between the 918 true and predicted sire breeding values was considerably lower for the animal model without a service sire effect than when it was included (.53 vs .74, respectively). However, the difference was cut in half (.66 vs .77) when only sires with greater than five daughter records were included. The high accuracy of the animal model with a random service sire effect indicates that the proposed model adequately accounts for the variation found in records for number of pigs born alive.     

Synergistic Effect of PVDF-Coated PCL-TCP Scaffolds and Pulsed Electromagnetic Field on Osteogenesis

Bone exhibits piezoelectric properties. Thus, electrical stimulations such as pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs) and stimuli-responsive piezoelectric properties of scaffolds have been investigated separately to evaluate their efficacy in supporting osteogenesis. However, current understanding of cells responding under the combined influence of PEMF and piezoelectric properties in scaffolds is still lacking. Therefore, in this study, we fabricated piezoelectric scaffolds by functionalization of polycaprolactone-tricalcium phosphate (PCL-TCP) films with a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) coating that is self-polarized by a modified breath-figure technique. The osteoinductive properties of these PVDF-coated PCL-TCP films on MC3T3-E1 cells were studied under the stimulation of PEMF. Piezoelectric and ferroelectric characterization demonstrated that scaffolds with piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃ = −1.2 pC/N were obtained at a powder dissolution temperature of 100 °C and coating relative humidity (RH) of 56%. DNA quantification showed that cell proliferation was significantly enhanced by PEMF as low as 0.6 mT and 50 Hz. Hydroxyapatite staining showed that cell mineralization was significantly enhanced by incorporation of PVDF coating. Gene expression study showed that the combination of PEMF and PVDF coating promoted late osteogenic gene expression marker most significantly. Collectively, our results suggest that the synergistic effects of PEMF and piezoelectric scaffolds on osteogenesis provide a promising alternative strategy for electrically augmented osteoinduction. The piezoelectric response of PVDF by PEMF, which could provide mechanical strain, is particularly interesting as it could deliver local mechanical stimulation to osteogenic cells using PEMF.     

Synergic influence of a surfactant and ultrasonication on the preparation of soluble,conducting polydiphenylamine/silica‐nanoparticle composites

Conducting polydiphenylamine was used to encapsulate silica nanoparticles through the oxidative polymerization of diphenylamine in the presence of ultrasonic irradiation. The polymerization was performed in the presence of sodium lauryl sulfate as a surfactant. Experiments performed in the absence of ultrasound clearly demonstrated that the application of ultrasonication played multiple roles in the preparation of a composite of polydiphenylamine with silica nanoparticles. Ultrasonication dispersed the silica nanoparticles, converted sodium lauryl sulfate to lauryl alcohol, and augmented the dispersion of the silica‐nanoparticle/polydiphenylamine composite in an organic medium. Silica‐nanoparticle/polydiphenylamine composites were also prepared in the absence of ultrasound and/or sodium lauryl sulfate. The silica‐nanoparticle/polydiphenylamine composites were characterized with Fourier trans form infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet–visible/near‐infrared spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 3912–3918, 2006     

Exploring the Semi-Supervised Video Object Segmentation Problem from a Cyclic Perspective

International Journal of Computer Vision - Modern video object segmentation (VOS) algorithms have achieved remarkably high performance in a sequential processing order, while most of currently...     

Deformable conductors for human–machine interface

Soft electronic systems are emerging that are heralded to bring revolution and a frontier for the interactions between human beings and machines. Interactive interfaces enable integrated bidirectional functionalities of sensing the external stimulus and providing interactive response to the users. Human body is considerably soft and stretchable; this characteristic puts forward the need for good mechanical conformabilities for the interfacing electronic devices. As a vital and indispensable component in electronic systems, soft and deformable conductor is of great importance to establish the enabling technologies. Significant progresses have been developed with new strategies and materials being exploited to improve the performance of elastic conductors. In this article, we review the latest advances in deformable conductors and their applications to enable soft electronic devices for human–machine interfaces. We first focus on the important characteristics of the deformable conductors in their stretchability, conductivity, and transparency. Representative soft electronic systems that are categorized into “receptive devices” and “responsive devices” are then reviewed.     

Scanning optical microellipsometer for pure surface profiling

We describe a scanning optical interferometer that can simultaneously perform ellipsometry measurements and thus provides a true surface profile. This is accomplished by projecting the back focal plane of the objective lens onto a CCD array. The measured phase differences between the p- and s-polarization components are converted, by using a specially developed algorithm, to optical phase changes caused by material variations. The compensation process is then applied to extract the true profile of the object surface. Experimental results obtained with the system are shown.     

Stabilization of all-pole unstable delay processes by simple controllers

The stabilization of a class of all-pole unstable delay processes of arbitrary order with single unstable pole by means of simple controllers is investigated in details. Complete stabilizability conditions are established and the computational methods for determining stabilizing controller parameters presented. They provide theoretical understanding of such a stabilization problem and can also serve as practical guidelines for actual controller design.     

A novel generic hebbian ordering-based fuzzy rule base reduction approach to mamdani neuro-fuzzy system

There are two important issues in neuro-fuzzy modeling: (1) interpretability--the ability to describe the behavior of the system in an interpretable way--and (2) accuracy--the ability to approximate the outcome of the system accurately. As these two objectives usually exert contradictory requirements on the neuro-fuzzy model, certain compromise has to be undertaken. This letter proposes a novel rule reduction algorithm, namely, Hebb rule reduction, and an iterative tuning process to balance interpretability and accuracy. The Hebb rule reduction algorithm uses Hebbian ordering, which represents the degree of coverage of the samples by the rule, as an importance measure of each rule to merge the membership functions and hence reduces the number of the rules. Similar membership functions (MFs) are merged by a specified similarity measure in an order of Hebbian importance, and the resultant equivalent rules are deleted from the rule base. The rule with a higher Hebbian importance will be retained among a set of rules. The MFs are tuned through the least mean square (LMS) algorithm to reduce the modeling error. The tuning of the MFs and the reduction of the rules proceed iteratively to achieve a balance between interpretability and accuracy. Three published data sets by Nakanishi (Nakanishi, Turksen, & Sugeno, 1993), the Pat synthetic data set (Pal, Mitra, & Mitra, 2003), and the traffic flow density prediction data set are used as benchmarks to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Good interpretability, as well as high modeling accuracy, are derivable simultaneously and are suitably benchmarked against other well-established neuro-fuzzy models.     

A practical approach to EMC education at the undergraduate level

In view of the importance of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), universities worldwide are paying more attention to training electronic engineers with good EMC design knowledge. As part of the EMC training, a practical printed circuit board (PCB) layout project has been offered as an elective to the undergraduates in the authors' universities. The project requires the students to design the PCB layout of a standard digital circuit twice, the first time with no EMC consideration at all, and the second time with careful EMC consideration. The significant difference in the levels of radiated emissions of the two layouts allows the students to appreciate the importance of EMC design at an early stage of product development.