Flow behaviour of labeled red blood cells in microchannels : a confocal micro-PTV assessment

The development of optical experimental techniques has contributed to obtain explanations on the blood flow behaviour through microvessels. Although the past results have been valuable, detailed studies on the flow properties of blood in the microcirculation have been limited by several technical factors such as poor spatial resolution and difficulty to obtain quantitative detailed measurements at such small scales. In recent years, due to advances in computers, optics, and digital image processing techniques, it has become possible to combine particle tracking methods with confocal microscopes. As a result, this combination has greatly increased the resolution of the conventional PIV systems and consequently provided additional detailed description on the blood cells motion not obtainable by traditional methods. In this work, we will show an overview of the most recent results on the blood flow behaviour in microchannels obtained by state-of-the-art confocal micro-PIV/PTV system.Program in Engineering, from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT), 2007 Global COE Program “Global Nano-Biomedical Engineering Education and Research Network”, Japan. Grant-in-Aid for Science and Technology (PTDC/SAU-BEB/108728/2008, PTDC/SAU- BEB/105650/2008 and PTDC/EME-MFE/099109/2008) from the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) and COMPETE, Portugal. The author would like to thank Professor Takami Yamaguchi, Professor Shigeo Wada and Dr. Takuji Ishikawa for their valuable suggestions and discussion during this research work

Optimal load shedding for microgrids with unlimited DGs

Recent years, increasing trends on electrical supply demand, make us to search for the new alternative in supplying the electrical power. A study in micro grid system with embedded Distribution Generations (DGs) to the system is rapidly increasing. Micro grid system basically is design either operate in islanding mode or interconnect with the main grid system. In any condition, the system must have reliable power supply and operating at low transmission power loss. During the emergency state such as outages of power due to electrical or mechanical faults in the system, it is important for the system to shed any load in order to maintain the system stability and security. In order to reduce the transmission loss, it is very important to calculate best size of the DGs as well as to find the best positions in locating the DG itself.. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been applied to find and calculate the load shedding priorities based on decision alternatives which have been made. The main objective of this project is to optimize the load shedding in the micro grid system with unlimited DG’s by applied optimization technique Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). The technique is used to optimize the placement and sizing of DGs, as well as to optimal the load shedding. Several load shedding schemes have been proposed and studied in this project such as load shedding with fixed priority index, without priority index and with dynamic priority index. The proposed technique was tested on the IEEE 69 Test Bus Distribution system

Multimedia search without visual analysis: the value of linguistic and contextual information

This paper addresses the focus of this special issue by analyzing the potential contribution of linguistic content and other non-image aspects to the processing of audiovisual data. It summarizes the various ways in which linguistic content analysis contributes to enhancing the semantic annotation of multimedia content, and, as a consequence, to improving the effectiveness of conceptual media access tools. A number of techniques are presented, including the time-alignment of textual resources, audio and speech processing, content reduction and reasoning tools, and the exploitation of surface features

Ion beam lithography for Fresnel zone plates in X-ray microscopy

Fresnel Zone Plates (FZP) are to date very successful focusing optics for X-rays. Established methods of fabrication are rather complex and based on electron beam lithography (EBL). Here, we show that ion beam lithography (IBL) may advantageously simplify their preparation. A FZP operable from the extreme UV to the limit of the hard X-ray was prepared and tested from 450 eV to 1500 eV. The trapezoidal profile of the FZP favorably activates its 2nd order focus. The FZP with an outermost zone width of 100 nm allows the visualization of features down to 61, 31 and 21 nm in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd order focus respectively. Measured efficiencies in the 1st and 2nd order of diffraction reach the theoretical predictions