Some effects of chronic monocular paralysis in adult cats rapidly reversed by paralyzing the second eye

Disruptions in binocular stimulation induced by two or more weeks of monocular paralysis (ChMP), reduce the encounter rates for Xrelative to Y-type LGN cells (a reduction in the X/Y ratio) during semichronic recordings from adult cats. Less than four days of monocular paralysis (AcMP) has no impact upon the X/Y ratio. The processes underlying ChMP'.s impact upon the X/Y ratio are not passive or degenerative, and are therefore active processes such as 1) excitability changes in X-cells, in Y-cells, or in both cell types; or 2) change in the functional characteristics of X-cells such that they are systematically reclassified as Y-cells. These alternatives were explored using standard extracellular unit recording procedures, including classification of cells as X- or Y-type with a common battery of receptive field and physiological measures. Preliminary experiments indicated that nitrous oxide anesthesia reverses the impact of ChMP, rendering the X/Y ratio of ChMP equivalent to that of AcMP (which is unaffected by anesthesia), and that this effect is so robust that it is evident in single electrode penetrations

Dynamic suspension modeling of an eddy-current device : an application to Maglev

When a magnetic source is simultaneously oscillated and translationally moved above a linear conductive passive guideway such as aluminum, eddy-currents are induced that give rise to a time-varying opposing field in the air-gap. This time-varying opposing field interacts with the source field, creating simultaneously suspension, propulsion or braking and lateral forces that are required for a Maglev system. The 2-D analytic based transient eddy-current force and power loss equations are derived for the case when an arbitrary magnetic source is moving and oscillating above a conductive guideway. These general equations for force and power loss are derived using a spatial Fourier transform and temporal Laplace transform technique. The derived equations are capable of accounting for step changes in the input parameters, in addition to arbitrary continuous changes in the input conditions. The equations have been validated for both step changes as well as continuous changes in the input conditions using a 2-D transient finite-element model. The dynamics of an EDW Maglev is investigated by using both steady-state and transient eddy-current models. The analytic equations for the self as well as mutual damping and stiffness coefficients of an EDW Maglev are derived using the 2-D analytic steady-state eddy-current force equations. It is shown that the steady-state eddy-current model in which the heave velocity is included in the formulation can accurately predict the dynamic behavior of a 2-degree of freedom EDW Maglev vehicle. The 2-D EDW Maglev vehicle has been built using Matlab/SimMechanics™. A 1-degree of freedom pendulum setup of an EDW Maglev has been built in order to investigate the dynamics of an EDW Maglev. The dynamic model of an EDW Maglev has been validated using this pendulum setup. A multi-degree of freedom Maglev vehicle prototype has been constructed using four EDWs. The dynamics of the prototype Maglev has been investigated using the Matlab simulations. This prototype setup will be used to investigate the dynamic behavior of EDW Maglev in the future

Maximum Likelihood Estimation Using Parallel Computing: An Introduction to MPI

The computational difficulty of econometric problems has increased dramatically in recent years as econometricians examine more complicated models and utilize more sophisticated estimation techniques. Many problems in econometrics are `embarrassingly parallel' and can take advantage of parallel computing to reduce the wall clock time it takes to solve a problem. In this paper I demonstrate a method that can be used to solve a maximum likelihood problem using the MPI message passing library. The econometric problem is a simple multinomial logit model that does not require parallel computing but illustrates many of the problems one would confront when estimating more complicated models

Adaptive network protocols to support queries in dynamic networks

Recent technological advancements have led to the popularity of mobile devices, which can dynamically form wireless networks. In order to discover and obtain distributed information, queries are widely used by applications in opportunistically formed mobile networks. Given the popularity of this approach, application developers can choose from a number of implementations of query processing protocols to support the distributed execution of a query over the network. However, different inquiry strategies (i.e., the query processing protocol and associated parameters used to execute a query) have different tradeoffs between the quality of the query's result and the cost required for execution under different operating conditions. The application developer's choice of inquiry strategy is important to meet the application's needs while considering the limited resources of the mobile devices that form the network. We propose adaptive approaches to choose the most appropriate inquiry strategy in dynamic mobile environments. We introduce an architecture for adaptive queries which employs knowledge about the current state of the dynamic mobile network and the history of previous query results to learn the most appropriate inquiry strategy to balance quality and cost tradeoffs in a given setting, and use this information to dynamically adapt the continuous query's execution

The Squared-Error of Generalized LASSO: A Precise Analysis

We consider the problem of estimating an unknown signal $x_0$ from noisy linear observations $y = Ax_0 + z\in R^m$. In many practical instances, $x_0$ has a certain structure that can be captured by a structure inducing convex function $f(\cdot)$. For example, $\ell_1$ norm can be used to encourage a sparse solution. To estimate $x_0$ with the aid of $f(\cdot)$, we consider the well-known LASSO method and provide sharp characterization of its performance. We assume the entries of the measurement matrix $A$ and the noise vector $z$ have zero-mean normal distributions with variances $1$ and $\sigma^2$ respectively. For the LASSO estimator $x^*$, we attempt to calculate the Normalized Square Error (NSE) defined as $\frac{\|x^*-x_0\|_2^2}{\sigma^2}$ as a function of the noise level $\sigma$, the number of observations $m$ and the structure of the signal. We show that, the structure of the signal $x_0$ and choice of the function $f(\cdot)$ enter the error formulae through the summary parameters $D(cone)$ and $D(\lambda)$, which are defined as the Gaussian squared-distances to the subdifferential cone and to the $\lambda$-scaled subdifferential, respectively. The first LASSO estimator assumes a-priori knowledge of $f(x_0)$ and is given by $\arg\min_{x}\{{\|y-Ax\|_2}~\text{subject to}~f(x)\leq f(x_0)\}$. We prove that its worst case NSE is achieved when $\sigma\rightarrow 0$ and concentrates around $\frac{D(cone)}{m-D(cone)}$. Secondly, we consider $\arg\min_{x}\{\|y-Ax\|_2+\lambda f(x)\}$, for some $\lambda\geq 0$. This time the NSE formula depends on the choice of $\lambda$ and is given by $\frac{D(\lambda)}{m-D(\lambda)}$. We then establish a mapping between this and the third estimator $\arg\min_{x}\{\frac{1}{2}\|y-Ax\|_2^2+ \lambda f(x)\}$. Finally, for a number of important structured signal classes, we translate our abstract formulae to closed-form upper bounds on the NSE

Signal processing based method for modeling and solving inverse scattering problems

A mature and difficult problem, still preoccupying many research communities in different application areas, is the recovery of a quantitative image of some unknown penetrable strongly scattering object. In most fields, such as ground penetrating radar, seismic and medical applications, the problem is compounded by the availability of only limited angle and noisy data. One of the more common approximate solution methods is based on diffraction tomography that relies on the first Born approximation method, which limits applications to weakly scattering situations. More sophisticated methods are typically iterative in nature, computationally intense and may not converge. We have studied an alternative nonlinear filtering approach and developed a new way to implement it, as well as evaluating different filter functions to find an optimal form. We have applied this approach to a number of classes of objects and developed a user- friendly scattered field simulator as a resource for this and related inverse scattering problems. We also re-investigated the widely accepted limitations of the first Born approximation and found that when close to a scattering resonance, the first Born approximation can yield a good estimate of the object’s scattering cross section. Tied to all of these imaging applications is the issue of limited data: how many sources and how many receivers are required for a given quality and reliability of the resulting image. We took a fundamental look at this issue in terms of the number of degrees of freedom of the entire source-measurement domain and deduced clear guidelines on the minimum data sets necessary that should be measured, in order to expect a reasonable image

An Acknowledgment-Based Approach for the Detection of Routing Misbehavior in MANETs

We study routing misbehavior in MANETs (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) in this paper. In general, routing protocols for MANETs are designed based on the assumption that all participating nodes are fully cooperative. However, due to the open structure and scarcely available battery-based energy, node misbehaviors may exist. One such routing misbehavior is that some selfish nodes will participate in the route discovery and maintenance processes but refuse to forward data packets. In this paper, we propose the 2ACK scheme that serves as an add-on technique for routing schemes to detect routing misbehavior and to mitigate their adverse effect. The main idea of the 2ACK scheme is to send two-hop acknowledgment packets in the opposite direction of the routing path. In order to reduce additional routing overhead, only a fraction of the received data packets are acknowledged in the 2ACK scheme. Analytical and simulation results are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme

Use of optical superbeams in atmospheric turbulence applications

The use of nonconventional beam classes in turbulence applications is investigated. Through the study on pseudo-Bessel correlated beam propagation in the atmosphere, it is shown that scintillation reduction by a partially coherent beam can be obtained by a corresponding incoherent beam array with finite number of beamlets. General guidelines for scintillation reduction by incoherent beam arrays are developed; these guidelines include reducing correlation of beamlet atmospheric propagation, maximizing the total intensity arriving at the detector, and selecting beamlets with small scintillation. With these goals in mind, Airy beams, a novel beam class, are applied to generate an incoherent beam array whose scintillations are significantly reduced. By the analogy with two-mode partially coherent beams, nonuniformly polarized beams are demonstrated to be of small scintillation. This suggests a relatively easy and inexpensive method to reduce the scintillation of a coherent optical beam. Finally a method to measure atmospheric turbulence strength by using vortex beams is proposed and its feasibility is theoretically demonstrated

Examining the relationship of variables related to litigation regarding students with significant cognitive disabilities

Non-null interferometry offers a viable alternative to traditional interferometric testing of aspheric micro-lenses since computer generated holograms or null optics whose fabrication and testing are very expensive, are not required. However, due to the violation of the Nyquist sampling theorem these non-null tests provide limited dynamic range. The dynamic range of these non-null tests can be extended by implementing an index liquid which allows the measurement of micro-lenses with several microns of departure from a sphere. The first objective of this dissertation was to test important micro-lens properties such as the sag, radius of curvature and form errors for a micro-lens by using an index liquid. The results compared favorably to measurements taken on a Twyman-Green interferometer, a contact profilometer and an optical non-contact profilometer. Also, retrace errors, which are aberrations caused by altered ray paths of the test beam through a micro-lens were investigated. Reverse ray-trace and reverse optimization techniques are typically used to calibrate retrace errors, but in depth knowledge of the interferometer optics is assumed, and hence cannot be used for systems containing commercial optics. In this dissertation, re-trace errors are quantified and a novel calibration procedure derived to experimentally compensate for these errors. This retrace error calibration led to agreement of within 1% for the sag values between the index liquid technique and a profilometer. The second objective of this dissertation was to enable measurements of arbitrary geometries and to reduce testing time compared to profilometry. The index liquid technique was applied to faceted microstructured optical products which are becoming more widespread due to advances in manufacturing. Many of these structures contain faceted surfaces with steep slopes. Adequate metrology for such surfaces is lacking. The use of the index liquid technique achieved high quality, high speed measurements of such faceted microstructures. Refraction is accounted for at the interfaces, rather than consider only optical path length changes due to the index liquid, and this significantly improves the facet angle measurement. The technique is demonstrated with the measurement of an array of micro-pyramids and show that our results are in good agreement with measurements taken on a contact profilometer. The index liquid measurements took approximately five seconds to complete compared to a measurement time of six hours for the contact profilometer. The technique was also extended to measure opaque micro-corner cubes by implementing an intermediate replication step. This allowed a measurement of the angle between facets of a nickel micro-corner cube hexagonal array, a combination not previously demonstrated in the literature. A first order uncertainty analysis was carried out on the index liquid technique to determine any limiting factors that need to be taken into account when assessing such parameters as the sag and facet angle. The uncertainties in the sag and facet angle were found to be well below 1%. Lastly secondary factors such interferometer bias, refraction, masking effects and pixel calibration were investigated to understand the possible implications on the sag and facet angle calculation