The Internationalization of Real Estate Research

The contributions of international researchers and institutions to real estate literature for the 1990 to 2006 period are assessed. Both the Asia-Pacific and European regions increase their influence on the top tier of real estate literature. The North American region, while still the dominant source of real estate research, sees its weighted share of publications in the top tier of academic real estate journals decline. Universities from Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands are leaders in their respective regions. Individual researchers domiciled outside of North America are also gaining influence, but few individuals rank high when compared to North American authors. It is anticipated that these trends will continue given the global growth in real estate as an asset class, the importance of real estate investment in countries posting substantial economic growth, and the allocation of resources and human capital within these growing regions to real estate research.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus nucleocapsid protein does not modulate transcription of the human FGL2 gene

Among the structural and nonstructural proteins of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), the nucleocapsid (N) protein plays pivotal roles in the biology and pathogenesis of viral infection. N protein is thought to dysregulate cell signalling and the transcription of cellular genes, including FGL2, which encodes a prothrombinase implicated in vascular thrombosis, fibrin deposition and pneumocyte necrosis. Here, we showed that N protein expressed in cultured human cells was predominantly found in the cytoplasm and was competent in repressing the transcriptional activity driven by interferon-stimulated response elements. However, the expression of N protein did not influence the transcription from the FGL2 promoter. More importantly, N protein did not modulate the expression of FGL2 mRNA or protein in transfected or SARS-CoV-infected cells. Taken together, our findings did not support the model in which SARS-CoV N protein specifically modulates transcription of the FGL2 gene to cause fibrosis and vascular thrombosis. © 2009 SGM.published_or_final_versio

Real time imaging of two-dimensional iron oxide spherulite nanostructure formation

The formation of complex hierarchical nanostructures has attracted a lot of attention from both the fundamental science and potential applications point of view. Spherulite structures with radial fibrillar branches have been found in various solids; however, their growth mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we report real time imaging of the formation of two-dimensional (2D) iron oxide spherulite nanostructures in a liquid cell using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). By tracking the growth trajectories, we show the characteristics of the reaction front and growth kinetics. Our observations reveal that the tip of a growing branch splits as the width exceeds certain sizes (5.5–8.5 nm). The radius of a spherulite nanostructure increases linearly with time at the early stage, transitioning to nonlinear growth at the later stage. Furthermore, a thin layer of solid is accumulated at the tip and nanoparticles from secondary nucleation also appear at the growing front which later develop into fibrillar branches. The spherulite nanostructure is polycrystalline with the co-existence of ferrihydrite and Fe3O4 through-out the growth. A growth model is further established, which provides rational explanations on the linear growth at the early stage and the nonlinearity at the later stage of growth. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Stabilization of Physical Systems via Saturated Controllers With Partial State Measurements

This article provides a constructive passivity-based control (PBC) approach to solve the set-point regulation problem for input-affine continuous nonlinear systems while considering bounded inputs. As customary in PBC, the methodology consists of two steps: energy shaping and damping injection. In terms of applicability, the proposed controllers have two advantages concerning other PBC techniques: 1) the energy shaping is carried out without solving partial differential equations and 2) the damping injection is performed without measuring the passive output. As a result, the proposed methodology is suitable to control a broad range of physical systems, e.g., mechanical, electrical, and electromechanical systems, with saturated control signals. We illustrate the applicability of the technique by designing controllers for systems in different physical domains, where we validate the analytical results via simulations and experiments

Tuning of Passivity-Based Controllers for Mechanical Systems

This article describes several approaches for tuning the parameters of a class of passivity-based controllers for standard nonlinear mechanical systems. In particular, we are interested in tuning controllers that preserve the mechanical system structure in the closed loop. To this end, first, we provide tuning rules for stabilization, i.e., the rate of convergence (exponential stability) and stability margin (input-to-state stability). Then, we provide guidelines to remove the overshoot. In addition, we propose a methodology to tune the gyroscopic-related parameters. We also provide remarks on the damping phenomenon to facilitate the practical implementation of our approaches. We conclude this article with experimental results obtained from applying our tuning rules to a fully actuated and an underactuated mechanical system

Field-Angle and DC-Bias Dependence of Spin-Torque Diode in Giant Magnetoresistive Microstripe

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Exterior optical cloaking and illusions by using active sources: a boundary element perspective

Recently, it was demonstrated that active sources can be used to cloak any objects that lie outside the cloaking devices [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{103}, 073901 (2009)]. Here, we propose that active sources can create illusion effects, so that an object outside the cloaking device can be made to look like another object. invisibility is a special case in which the concealed object is transformed to a volume of air. From a boundary element perspective, we show that active sources can create a nearly "silent" domain which can conceal any objects inside and at the same time make the whole system look like an illusion of our choice outside a virtual boundary. The boundary element method gives the fields and field gradients (which can be related to monopoles and dipoles) on continuous curves which define the boundary of the active devices. Both the cloaking and illusion effects are confirmed by numerical simulations