Design guidelines for spatial modulation

A new class of low-complexity, yet energyefficient Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission techniques, namely the family of Spatial Modulation (SM) aided MIMOs (SM-MIMO) has emerged. These systems are capable of exploiting the spatial dimensions (i.e. the antenna indices) as an additional dimension invoked for transmitting information, apart from the traditional Amplitude and Phase Modulation (APM). SM is capable of efficiently operating in diverse MIMO configurations in the context of future communication systems. It constitutes a promising transmission candidate for large-scale MIMO design and for the indoor optical wireless communication whilst relying on a single-Radio Frequency (RF) chain. Moreover, SM may also be viewed as an entirely new hybrid modulation scheme, which is still in its infancy. This paper aims for providing a general survey of the SM design framework as well as of its intrinsic limits. In particular, we focus our attention on the associated transceiver design, on spatial constellation optimization, on link adaptation techniques, on distributed/ cooperative protocol design issues, and on their meritorious variants

Atoll research bulletin.

no.531-542 (2005

Aeronautical engineering. A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 127, October 1980

A bibliography containing 431 abstracts addressing various topics in aeronautical engineering is given. The coverage includes engineering and theoretical aspects of design. construction, evaluation, testing, operation, and performance of aircraft (including aircraft engines) and associated components, equipment, and systems. It also includes research and development in aerodynamics, aeronautics, and ground support equipment for aeronautical vehicles

Aeronautical Engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 166)

This bibliography lists 558 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in September 1983

Evolutionary and ecological processes in microparasite communities of bats

2020 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.The majority of parasites infecting humans come from animals, so it is necessary to study how parasites are maintained in nature to understand which human populations are at risk of spillover. Parasites are also highly diverse in their own right, with their own fascinating ecology, so studying parasite communities will give us a full perspective of Earth's biodiversity. Research has shown that bats are significant hosts of parasites globally, including important pathogens of humans. The unique evolution of flight in bats has influenced their ability to disperse parasites, and may have modified their immune systems to be more tolerant of infections compared to other mammals. Thus, studying bat parasite communities could deepen our knowledge of the evolutionary history of mammalian parasites and the importance of flight in the maintenance of parasite community diversity in bats. In this dissertation, I focus on the evolutionary history and ecological forces affecting diversity in blood-borne microparasite communities of bats. There is a particular focus in this dissertation on Bartonella bacteria, a common parasite in mammals. To determine the importance of bats in the historical diversification of Bartonella bacteria, I performed the most comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the genus to date, including data from 121 strains cultured from bats globally. I discovered that Bartonella bacteria began infecting mammals 62 million years ago and likely originated from bats. In a review of other bat parasites, including eukaryotic trypanosomes and haemosporidian parasites, I find that bats have had a similarly deep influence on the evolution of these taxa, and their historical spread across continents and to other mammalian hosts. To examine the importance of dispersal on parasite community diversity at smaller ecological scales, I focused on Bartonella communities in African fruit bats. I investigated differences in the Bartonella communities in fruit bat populations across a West African island chain. In addition, I examined the population genetics of bat flies, the presumed vectors of Bartonella in bats, and bat fly symbionts to compare with the genetic population structure of the bat hosts. Bartonella communities differed across islands and showed a pattern of isolation by geographic distance, indicating that dispersal of parasite species is constrained by bat movement patterns. Population structure was reduced in bat flies and symbionts compared to that of the bat hosts, suggesting that bat movements between islands are going undetected from population genetics of the hosts alone. Finally, I investigated Bartonella community dynamics in a captive colony of fruit bats in Ghana over a sampling period of three years. In this study, the population density of bat flies declined over time and was then restored via reintroduction of flies from a wild source population, causing predictable changes in Bartonella prevalence within the bat colony. These results provide the first experimental confirmation of bat flies as vectors of Bartonella in bats. In addition, changes in Bartonella diversity within the colony that occurred in the absence of bat flies might be attributed to ecological drift and selection through interspecies competition mediated by the host immune system. These projects highlight the ecological and evolutionary processes affecting microparasite communities of bats, providing useful information for understanding how parasite biodiversity is created and maintained in natural populations

Structure and Evolution of Star Clusters in the Vicinity of the Magellanic Clouds

This thesis describes the collection, reduction, and analysis of Charge Coupled Detector (CCD) images of star clusters. The objects studied are primarily in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby galaxy. The study of these groupings can provide information such as the initial dynamic state of Globular Clusters, the heavy-clement enrichment rate of the LMC, the distribution of masses that stars form with, and the validity of given stellar evolution models. The majority of the observations were collected at Mount John University Observatory (NZ). Procedures for the collection and transfer of the data are described, along with an overview of the analysis facility and CCDs. Statistical moment-based ellipse fitting was applied to the observations, confirming that trends are evident in the position angles and ellipticities of the clusters, as had been reported in the literature. Artificial images of clusters with known parameters were generated and subjected to the same analysis techniques, revealing apparent trends caused by stochastic processes. Caution should therefore be exercised in the interpretation of observational trends in the structure of young LMC clusters. Isochrones were used to date the 19 clusters. The resulting ages are in good agreement with the literature, as are results from profile modeling. There is no evidence for tidal truncation of the young clusters. Observations were made of two LMC and two Galactic star clusters in a test of imaging clusters with the Vilnius photometric system and a CCD. The colour-magnitude diagrams, distances and interstellar reddenings of the clusters were derived and found to be in agreement with the literature. This is the first time that the standard Vilnius filter set has been used with a CCD. Use of the system for direct imaging of star clusters appears promising. Johnson BV CCD observations were made of the young LMC cluster NGC 2214 and a nearby field using the Anglo-Australian Telescope. It has been suggested in the literature that this elliptical cluster is actually two clusters in the process of merging. No evidence was found from profile fitting or the colour-magnitude diagrams to support this contention. Completeness factors were estimated for the CCD frames. These values were used in conjunction with luminosity functions to estimate the Initial Mass Function (IMF) for NGC 2214. A power-law M-(1+x) was assumed for the IMF (where M is stellar mass relative to that of the Sun Mo), with a good fit being found for x = 1.01 plus-minus 0.09. There is some indication that the low mass end (less than or equal to 3oMo) has a smaller gradient than the high mass end of the derived IMF. The value of x is in reasonable agreement with literature values for other Magellanic IMFs, and not substantially different from the poorly determined Galactic IMFs, suggesting the possibility of a 'universal' IMF over the Magellanic Clouds and our Galaxy in the mass range tilde 1 to tilde 10 Mo

Integrating genomics with the fossil record to explore the evolutionary history of Echinoidea

Echinoidea constitutes one of five major clades of living echinoderms, marine animals uniquely characterized by a pentaradial symmetry. Approximately 1,000 living and 10,000 extinct species have been described, including many commonly known as sea urchins, heart urchins and sand dollars. Today, echinoids are ubiquitous in benthic marine environments, where they strongly affect the functioning of biodiverse communities such as coral reefs and kelp forests. Given the quality of their fossil record, their remarkable morphological complexity and our thorough understanding of their development, echinoids provide unparalleled opportunities to explore evolutionary questions in deep-time, providing access to the developmental and morphological underpinnings of evolutionary innovation. These questions cannot be addressed without first resolving the phylogenetic relationships among living and extinct lineages. The goal of this dissertation is to advance our understanding of echinoid relationships and evolutionary history, as well as to explore more broadly the integration of phylogenomic, morphological and paleontological data in phylogenetic reconstruction and macroevolutionary inference.In Chapter 1, I report the results of the first phylogenomic analysis of echinoids based on the sequencing of 17 novel echinoid transcriptomes. Phylogenetic analyses of this data resolve the position of several clades—including the sand dollars—in disagreement with traditional morphological hypotheses. I demonstrate the presence of a strong phylogenetic signal for these novel resolutions, and explore scenarios to reconcile these findings with morphological evidence. In Chapter 7, I extend this approach with a more thorough taxon sampling, resulting in a robust topology with a near-complete sampling of major echinoid lineages. This effort reveals that apatopygids, a clade of three species with previously unclear affinities, represent the only living descendants of a once diverse Mesozoic clade. I also perform a thorough time calibration analysis, quantifying the relative effects of choosing among alternative models of molecular evolution, gene samples and clock priors. I introduce the concept of a chronospace and use it to reveal that only the last among the aforementioned choices affects significantly our understanding of echinoid diversification. Molecular clocks unambiguously support late Permian and late Cretaceous origins for crown group echinoids and sand dollars, respectively, implying long ghost ranges for both. Fossils have been shown to improve the accuracy of phylogenetic comparative methods, warranting their inclusion alongside extant terminals when exploring evolutionary processes across deep timescales. However, their impact on topological inference remains controversial. I explore this topic in Chapter 3 with the use of simulations, which show that morphological phylogenies are more accurate when fossil taxa are incorporated. I also show that tip-dated Bayesian inference, which takes stratigraphic information from fossils into account, outperforms uncalibrated methods. This approach is complemented in Chapter 2 with the analysis of empirical datasets, confirming that incorporating fossils reshapes phylogenies in a manner that is entirely distinct from increased sampling of extant taxa, a result largely attributable to the occurrence of distinctive character combinations among fossils. Even though phylogenomic and paleontological data are complementary resources for unraveling the relationships and divergence times of lineages, few studies have attempted to fully integrate them. Chapter 4 revisits the phylogeny of crown group Echinoidea using a total-evidence dating approach combining phylogenomic, morphological and stratigraphic information. To this end, I develop a method (genesortR) for subsampling molecular datasets that selects loci with high phylogenetic signal and low systematic biases. The results demonstrate that combining different data sources increases topological accuracy and helps resolve phylogenetic conflicts. Notably, I present a new hypothesis for the origin and early morphological evolution of the sand dollars and close allies. In Chapter 6, I compare the behavior of genesortR against alternative subsampling strategies across a sample of phylogenomic matrices. I find this method to systematically outperform random loci selection, unlike commonly-used approaches that target specific evolutionary rates or minimize sources of systematic error. I conclude that these methods should not be used indiscriminately, and that multivariate methods of phylogenomic subsampling should be favored. Finally, in Chapter 5, I explore the macroevolutionary dynamics of echinoid body size across 270 million years using data for more than 5,000 specimens in a phylogenetically explicit context. I also develop a method (extendedSurface) for parameterizing adaptive landscapes that overcomes issues with existing approaches and finds better fitting models. While echinoid body size has been largely constrained to evolve within a single adaptive peak, the disparity of the clade was generated by regime shifts driving the repeated evolution of miniaturized and gigantic forms. Most innovations occurred during the latter half of the Mesozoic, and were followed by a drastic slowdown in the aftermath of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 289)

This bibliography lists 792 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in Mar. 1993. Subject coverage includes: design, construction and testing of aircraft and aircraft engines; aircraft components, equipment, and systems; ground support systems; and theoretical and applied aspects of aerodynamics and general fluid dynamics

Aeronautical engineering: A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography (supplement 248)

This publication is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in Supplements 236 through 247 of Aeronautical Engineering: A Continuing Bibliography. The bibliographic series is compiled through the cooperative efforts of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Seven indexes are included -- subject, personal author, corporate source, foreign technology, contract number, report number and accession number