Integrating Existing Software Toolkits into VO System

Virtual Observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperating data archives and software tools. Taking advantages of the latest information technologies, it aims to provide a data-intensively online research environment for astronomers all around the world. A large number of high-qualified astronomical software packages and libraries are powerful and easy of use, and have been widely used by astronomers for many years. Integrating those toolkits into the VO system is a necessary and important task for the VO developers. VO architecture greatly depends on Grid and Web services, consequently the general VO integration route is "Java Ready - Grid Ready - VO Ready". In the paper, we discuss the importance of VO integration for existing toolkits and discuss the possible solutions. We introduce two efforts in the field from China-VO project, "gImageMagick" and " Galactic abundance gradients statistical research under grid environment". We also discuss what additional work should be done to convert Grid service to VO service.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, will be published in SPIE 2004 conference proceeding

A compact robotic device for upper-limb reaching rehabilitation

This paper presents a compact linear-motion robotic device for upper-extremity reaching rehabilitation. Starting from conceptual design, the paper describes electronic circuit design and program development. The work develops a prototype that provides active and passive rehabilitation training. In active training, subjects actively move their arm with assistive or resistive force from the device to finish predefined displacement and force profiles. In passive training, subjects remain passive while the device moves the limb following the pre-defined displacement profile. Engineering specifications with adequate safety factor are determined and standard electronic and readily available mechanical components are exploited to keep the total cost low

G-VAE: A Continuously Variable Rate Deep Image Compression Framework

Rate adaption of deep image compression in a single model will become one of the decisive factors competing with the classical image compression codecs. However, until now, there is no perfect solution that neither increases the computation nor affects the compression performance. In this paper, we propose a novel image compression framework G-VAE (Gained Variational Autoencoder), which could achieve continuously variable rate in a single model. Unlike the previous solutions that encode progressively or change the internal unit of the network, G-VAE only adds a pair of gain units at the output of encoder and the input of decoder. It is so concise that G-VAE could be applied to almost all the image compression methods and achieve continuously variable rate with negligible additional parameters and computation. We also propose a new deep image compression framework, which outperforms all the published results on Kodak datasets in PSNR and MS-SSIM metrics. Experimental results show that adding a pair of gain units will not affect the performance of the basic models while endowing them with continuously variable rate

Knee anterior cruciate ligament bio stiffness measuring instrument

Aiming at the lack of timely and effective evaluation of knee anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, a knee ACL force and displacement measuring instrument was developed. Test experiments were carried out using a laboratory-made test platform and a robotic arm. Firstly, the importance of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery is introduced. The necessity of this kind of measuring instrument is proposed. The reliability of the lower stiffness measuring instrument under different measurement conditions in space is verified by the mechanical model of the previous ACL in-situ measurement. Then the design structure and measurement system of the instrument are introduced in detail. Finally, using the laboratory-made test platform and the UR5 robot arm and stiffness measuring instrument for the displacement and force test accuracy experiments, and the pig bone anterior cruciate ligament test and postoperative evaluation experiments, prove that the measuring instrument can be used for ACL Assessment of reconstructive surgery

SjTPdb: integrated transcriptome and proteome database and analysis platform for Schistosoma japonicum

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Schistosoma japonicum </it>is one of the three major blood fluke species, the etiological agents of schistosomiasis which remains a serious public health problem with an estimated 200 million people infected in 76 countries. In recent years, enormous amounts of both transcriptomic and proteomic data of schistosomes have become available, providing information on gene expression profiles for developmental stages and tissues of <it>S. japonicum</it>. Here, we establish a public searchable database, termed SjTPdb, with integrated transcriptomic and proteomic data of <it>S. japonicum</it>, to enable more efficient access and utility of these data and to facilitate the study of schistosome biology, physiology and evolution.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>All the available ESTs, EST clusters, and the proteomic dataset of <it>S. japonicum </it>are deposited in SjTPdb. The core of the database is the 8,420 <it>S. japonicum </it>proteins translated from the EST clusters, which are well annotated for sequence similarity, structural features, functional ontology, genomic variations and expression patterns across developmental stages and tissues including the tegument and eggshell of this flatworm. The data can be queried by simple text search, BLAST search, search based on developmental stage of the life cycle, and an integrated search for more specific information. A PHP-based web interface allows users to browse and query SjTPdb, and moreover to switch to external databases by the following embedded links.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>SjTPdb is the first schistosome database with detailed annotations for schistosome proteins. It is also the first integrated database of both transcriptome and proteome of <it>S. japonicum</it>, providing a comprehensive data resource and research platform to facilitate functional genomics of schistosome. SjTPdb is available from URL: <url>http://function.chgc.sh.cn/sj-proteome/index.htm</url>.</p