A Realistic Radar Ray Tracing Simulator for Hand Pose Imaging

With the increasing popularity of human-computer interaction applications, there is also growing interest in generating sufficiently large and diverse data sets for automatic radar-based recognition of hand poses and gestures. Radar simulations are a vital approach to generating training data (e.g., for machine learning). Therefore, this work applies a ray tracing method to radar imaging of the hand. The performance of the proposed simulation approach is verified by a comparison of simulation and measurement data based on an imaging radar with a high lateral resolution. In addition, the surface material model incorporated into the ray tracer is highlighted in more detail and parameterized for radar hand imaging. Measurements and simulations show a very high similarity between synthetic and real radar image captures. The presented results demonstrate that it is possible to generate very realistic simulations of radar measurement data even for complex radar hand pose imaging systems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted at European Microwave Week (EuMW 2023) to the topic "R28 Human Activity Monitoring, including Gesture Recognition

Neuroarchitecture of Aminergic Systems in the Larval Ventral Ganglion of Drosophila melanogaster

Biogenic amines are important signaling molecules in the central nervous system of both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, biogenic amines take part in the regulation of various vital physiological processes such as feeding, learning/memory, locomotion, sexual behavior, and sleep/arousal. Consequently, several morphological studies have analyzed the distribution of aminergic neurons in the CNS. Previous descriptions, however, did not determine the exact spatial location of aminergic neurite arborizations within the neuropil. The release sites and pre-/postsynaptic compartments of aminergic neurons also remained largely unidentified. We here used gal4-driven marker gene expression and immunocytochemistry to map presumed serotonergic (5-HT), dopaminergic, and tyraminergic/octopaminergic neurons in the thoracic and abdominal neuromeres of the Drosophila larval ventral ganglion relying on Fasciclin2-immunoreactive tracts as three-dimensional landmarks. With tyrosine hydroxylase- (TH) or tyrosine decarboxylase 2 (TDC2)-specific gal4-drivers, we also analyzed the distribution of ectopically expressed neuronal compartment markers in presumptive dopaminergic TH and tyraminergic/octopaminergic TDC2 neurons, respectively. Our results suggest that thoracic and abdominal 5-HT and TH neurons are exclusively interneurons whereas most TDC2 neurons are efferent. 5-HT and TH neurons are ideally positioned to integrate sensory information and to modulate neuronal transmission within the ventral ganglion, while most TDC2 neurons appear to act peripherally. In contrast to 5-HT neurons, TH and TDC2 neurons each comprise morphologically different neuron subsets with separated in- and output compartments in specific neuropil regions. The three-dimensional mapping of aminergic neurons now facilitates the identification of neuronal network contacts and co-localized signaling molecules, as exemplified for DOPA decarboxylase-synthesizing neurons that co-express crustacean cardioactive peptide and myoinhibiting peptides

Bridging a Gap in Metabarcoding Research: The ASV Table Registry

Metabarcoding is a tool to routinely identify species in environmental mass-samples and thereby analyze their species composition. Using metabarcoding techniques outperforms the traditional species identification by human experts in amount, speed and quality when well curated reference data are available.Therefore, metabarcoding can be seen as the future standard method for all biological research areas where species occurrence and distribution is in question, e.g., ecological research or monitoring projects (Porter and Hajibabaei 2018).A common outcome of metabarcoding research are Amplicon Sequence Variant tables (ASV, Callahan et al. 2017). These tables combine the extracted sequences of all sampling plots with the occurrences of each sequence within a single plot. To identify the species, each sequence is searched in one or more reference databases that hold sequences and their known taxon identifications (e.g., Barcode Of Life Data system (BOLD) or the German Barcode of Life library (GBOL)). The sequence searches utilise tools like BLAST, BOLD identification engine, or vsearch. Found taxa and their taxonomy are added to the ASV tables as taxon assignments.The number and precision of taxon assignments will increase with the growth of available sequences and quality of identifications in reference databases over time (Weigand et al. 2019). The introduction of new marker sequences and improvements in search tools will further enhance the taxon assignments. Thus, the taxon assignments in ASV tables are subject to change. Projects with the aim of building up species inventories on a large scale (GBOL) or monitoring programs, like the Automated Multisensor Stations for Monitoring of BioDiversity (Wägele et al. 2022), quickly produce data sets with thousands of sequences at numerous locations.Currently, most ASV tables are stored as supplements to publications or in private repositories. This makes analysis across multiple research projects difficult and error prone as sequences and their taxon assignments are often not accessible. Efforts, like the European Bioinformatics Institute metagenomics with Mgnify serve the needs for uploading and annotating environmental DNA samples (Mitchell et al. 2017), but a registry for ASV tables with complete data life cycles is lacking.To fill this gap, we develop an ASV Table Registry as part of the German Barcode of Life III - Dark Taxa project. This allows users to:register ASV tables and sequencesupload and manage ASV tables with versioningpublish ASV tables with DOIssearch by sequences, taxa, and occurrence dataretrieve API-based dataassign taxonomic names with various tools and reference databaseskeep track of the applied search methods and parametersThe data life cycle of the uploaded ASV tables consists of several draft versions (each re-annotation with the identification pipeline creates a new draft version) and eventually a published version with a DOI. New draft versions can be created from the published version, then re-annotated and published again. The tracking of former taxon assignments allows researchers to re-evaluate data of former studies, compare them, and add new results. The ASV Table Registry developed here aims to make ASV tables FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and to foster the shared use in research projects.Future development focuses on the incorporation of the MIxS standard (Yilmaz et al. 2011) and on submission of the published data to International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) using established dataflows from the German Federation for Biological Data (GFBio) and NFDI4biodiversity.The ASV data portal is accessible at: https://bolgermany.de/metabarcoding; the source code at: https://gitlab.leibniz-lib.de/GBOL/asv-table-registry

Development of multidimensional characteristic maps for the real-time adjustment of thermally induced TCP-displacements in precise machining

In the present paper the development of characteristic diagrams of cutting processes which relate the Tool Center Point (TCP) displacement to thermal tool load is explained. The heat fluxes in the system workpiece –chip –tool are estimated by means of FEA (finite element analysis) in order to achieve multidimensional dependencies as function of the cutting parameters. The approach allows the real-time correction of tool paths within the machine tool control crucial in precise machining operations. Model verification and result comparison with cutting experiments have been realized

The ASV registry: a place for ASVs to be

Despite the effectiveness of DNA metabarcoding for gaining insights into biodiversity and environmental species composition, a centralized management and storage option including easy accessibility of already published data is lacking. Since most data is published as supplementary material or in private repositories, DNA metabarcoding has a huge untapped potential to be used for analysis across multiple taxa, sample locations or multiple research projects. We developed a platform to register, manage and identify amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) or zero-radius OTUs (ZOTUs), respectively, against several barcode reference datasets. Moreover, ASV tables can be uploaded, managed, versioned, and published with DOIs thus contributing to the full research Data Life Cycle

Consistent simulation strategy for heat sources and fluxes in milling

The paper presents a consistent numerical simulation method for calculation of heat sources and heat fluxes in milling processes. First of all, by means of finite element simulation of the interrupted chip formation process the cutting heat source is calculated. Next, the non-steady-state heat fluxes into the workpiece, the chips and the tool are computed numerically. The computed fluxes serve as boundary conditions for thermomechanical FE workpiece and tool models. The numerical models are fitted and verified by experiments of S235 steel. The simulations show a good match with the force and temperature measurements of the cutting processes

The ASV registry: a place for ASVs to be

Despite the effectiveness of DNA metabarcoding for gaining insights into biodiversity and environmental species composition, a centralized management and storage option including easy accessibility of already published data is lacking. Since most data is published as supplementary material or in private repositories, DNA metabarcoding has a huge untapped potential to be used for analysis across multiple taxa, sample locations or multiple research projects. We developed a platform to register, manage and identify amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) or zero-radius OTUs (ZOTUs), respectively, against several barcode reference datasets. Moreover, ASV tables can be uploaded, managed, versioned, and published with DOIs thus contributing to the full research Data Life Cycle