Method and Apparatus for the Portable Identification Of Material Thickness And Defects Along Uneven Surfaces Using Spatially Controlled Heat Application

A method and apparatus for testing a material such as the water-wall tubes in boilers includes the use of a portable thermal line heater having radiation shields to control the amount of thermal radiation that reaches a thermal imager. A procedure corrects for variations in the initial temperature of the material being inspected. A method of calibrating the testing device to determine an equation relating thickness of the material to temperatures created by the thermal line heater uses empirical data derived from tests performed on test specimens for each material type, geometry, density, specific heat, speed at which the line heater is moved across the material and heat intensity

Recovering short generators of principal ideals in cyclotomic rings

Abstract: A handful of recent cryptographic proposals rely on the conjectured hardness of the following problem in the ring of integers of a cyclotomic number field: given a basis of a principal ideal that is guaranteed to have a ``rather short'' generator, find such a generator. Recently, Bernstein and Campbell-Groves-Shepherd sketched potential attacks against this problem; most notably, the latter authors claimed a \emph{polynomial-time quantum} algorithm. (Alternatively, replacing the quantum component with an algorithm of Biasse and Fieker would yield a \emph{classical subexponential-time} algorithm.) A key claim of Campbell \etal\ is that one step of their algorithm---namely, decoding the \emph{log-unit} lattice of the ring to recover a short generator from an arbitrary one---is classically efficient (whereas the standard approach on general lattices takes exponential time). However, very few convincing details were provided to substantiate this claim. In this work, we clarify the situation by giving a rigorous proof that the log-unit lattice is indeed efficiently decodable, for any cyclotomic of prime-power index. Combining this with the quantum algorithm from a recent work of Biasse and Song confirms the main claim of Campbell \etal\xspace Our proof consists of two main technical contributions: the first is a geometrical analysis, using tools from analytic number theory, of the standard generators of the group of cyclotomic units. The second shows that for a wide class of typical distributions of the short generator, a standard lattice-decoding algorithm can recover it, given any generator. By extending our geometrical analysis, as a second main contribution we obtain an efficient algorithm that, given any generator of a principal ideal (in a prime-power cyclotomic), finds a 2^O~(n^1/2) -approximate shortest vector in the ideal. Combining this with the result of Biasse and Song yields a quantum polynomial-time algorithm for the 2^O~(n^1/2)-approximate Shortest Vector Problem on principal ideal lattices

\emph{In-situ} determination of astro-comb calibrator lines to better than 10 cm s−1^{-1}

Improved wavelength calibrators for high-resolution astrophysical spectrographs will be essential for precision radial velocity (RV) detection of Earth-like exoplanets and direct observation of cosmological deceleration. The astro-comb is a combination of an octave-spanning femtosecond laser frequency comb and a Fabry-P\'erot cavity used to achieve calibrator line spacings that can be resolved by an astrophysical spectrograph. Systematic spectral shifts associated with the cavity can be 0.1-1 MHz, corresponding to RV errors of 10-100 cm/s, due to the dispersive properties of the cavity mirrors over broad spectral widths. Although these systematic shifts are very stable, their correction is crucial to high accuracy astrophysical spectroscopy. Here, we demonstrate an \emph{in-situ} technique to determine the systematic shifts of astro-comb lines due to finite Fabry-P\'erot cavity dispersion. The technique is practical for implementation at a telescope-based spectrograph to enable wavelength calibration accuracy better than 10 cm/s.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN