On rationality of the intersection points of a line with a plane quartic

We study the rationality of the intersection points of certain lines and smooth plane quartics C defined over F_q. For q \geq 127, we prove the existence of a line such that the intersection points with C are all rational. Using another approach, we further prove the existence of a tangent line with the same property as soon as the characteristic of F_q is different from 2 and q \geq 66^2+1. Finally, we study the probability of the existence of a rational flex on C and exhibit a curious behavior when the characteristic of F_q is equal to 3.Comment: 17 pages. Theorem 2 now includes the characteristic 2 case; Conjecture 1 from the previous version is proved wron

Overview of recent work on self-healing in cementitious materials

Cracks, especially microcracks, in concrete are of paramount importance to the durability and the service life of cementitious composite. However, the self-healing technology, including autogenous healing and autonomous healing, is expected to be one of effective tools to overcome this boring problem. In this paper, we focus on the autogenous healing of concrete material and a few of recent works of autonomous healing are also mentioned. The durability and the mechanical properties improved by the self-healing phenomenon are reviewed from experimental investigation and practical experience. Several aspects of researches, such as autogenous healing capability of an innovative concrete incorporated geo-materials, self-healing of engineered cementitious composite and fire-damaged concrete, effect of mineral and admixtures on mechanism and efficiency of self-healing concrete are summarized to evaluate the presented progresses in the past several years and to outline the perspective for the further developments. Moreover, a special emphasis is given on the analytical models and computer simulation method of the researches of self-healing in cementitious materials.<br><br>Las fisuras, y sobre todo las microfisuras, tienen una gran repercusión en la durabilidad y en la vida útil de los materiales cementantes. Ante este problema, la tecnología de la autorreparación, tanto autógena como autónoma, se presenta como una solución eficaz. El artículo se centra en la reparación autógena del hormigón, así como en algunos trabajos recientes sobre la reparación autónoma. Se describen las mejoras de las propiedades de durabilidad y de resistencia que proporciona la técnica del hormigón autorreparable, tanto desde el punto de vista de la investigación experimental como del de la experiencia práctica. A fin de evaluar los avances logrados en los últimos años y de trazar las grandes líneas de desarrollo futuro, se resumen varios de los aspectos investigados: capacidad de reparación de un hormigón innovador que incorpora geomateriales; autorreparabilidad tanto de los compuestos cementantes tecnológicos como de los hormigones que han sufrido daños por incendio; influencia de los aditivos minerales en el mecanismo y eficacia del hormigón autorreparable. Además, se destaca el papel de los modelos analíticos y los métodos de simulación informática en la investigación de los materiales cementantes autorreparables

Spatio-temporal directional analysis of 4D echocardiography

Speckle noise corrupts ultrasonic data by introducing sharp changes in an echocardiographic image intensity profile, while attenuation alters the intensity of equally significant cardiac structures. These properties introduce inhomogeneity in the spatial domain and suggests that measures based on phase information rather than intensity are more appropriate for denoising and cardiac border detection. The present analysis method relies on the expansion of temporal ultrasonic volume data on complex exponential wavelet-like basis functions called Brushlets. These basis functions decompose a signal into distinct patterns of oriented textures. Projected coefficients are associated with distinct 'brush strokes' of a particular size and orientation. 4D overcomplete brushlet analysis is applied to temporal echocardiographic values. We show that adding the time dimension in the analysis dramatically improves the quality and robustness of the method without adding complexity in the design of a segmentation tool. We have investigated mathematical and empirical methods for identifying the most 'efficient' brush stroke sizes and orientations for decomposition and reconstruction on both phantom and clinical data. In order to determine the 'best tiling' or equivalently, the 'best brushlet basis', we use an entropy-based information cost metric function. Quantitative validation and clinical applications of this new spatio-temporal analysis tool are reported for balloon phantoms and clinical data sets

Real-Time Segmentation of 4D Ultrasound by Active Geometric Functions

Four-dimensional ultrasound based on matrix phased array transducers can capture the complex 4D cardiac motion in a complete and real-time fashion. However, the large amount of information residing in 4D ultrasound scans and novel applications under interventional settings pose a big challenge in efficiency for workflow and computer-aided diagnostic algorithms such as segmentation. In this context, a novel formulation framework of the minimal surface problem, called active geometric functions (AGF), is proposed to reach truly real-time performance in segmenting 4D ultrasound data. A specific instance of AGF based on finite element modeling and Hermite surface descriptors was implemented and evaluated on 35 4D ultrasound data sets with a total of 425 time frames. Quantitative comparison to manual tracing showed that the proposed method provides LV contours close to manual segmentation and that the discrepancy was comparable to inter-observer tracing variability. The ability of such realtime segmentation will not only facilitate the diagnoses and workflow, but also enables novel applications such as interventional guidance and interactive image acquisition with online segmentation

Quantification of LV Volumes with 4D Real-Time Echocardiography

This paper presents a new 4D (3D+Time) expansion of echocardiographic volumes on complex exponential wavelet-like basis functions called Brushlets. Brushlet functions offer good localization in time and frequency and decompose a signal into distinct patterns of oriented textures, invariant to intensity and contrast range. Automatic left ventricle (LV) endocardial border detection is carried out in the transform domain where speckle noise is attenuated while cardiac structure location is preserved. Quantitative validation and clinical applications of this new spatio-temporal analysis tool are reported with results on phantoms and clinical data sets to quantify LV volumes and ejection fraction

A Two-Region Diffusion Model for Current-Induced Instabilities of Step Patterns on Vicinal Si(111) Surfaces

We study current-induced step bunching and wandering instabilities with subsequent pattern formations on vicinal surfaces. A novel two-region diffusion model is developed, where we assume that there are different diffusion rates on terraces and in a small region around a step, generally arising from local differences in surface reconstruction. We determine the steady state solutions for a uniform train of straight steps, from which step bunching and in-phase wandering instabilities are deduced. The physically suggestive parameters of the two-region model are then mapped to the effective parameters in the usual sharp step models. Interestingly, a negative kinetic coefficient results when the diffusion in the step region is faster than on terraces. A consistent physical picture of current-induced instabilities on Si(111) is suggested based on the results of linear stability analysis. In this picture the step wandering instability is driven by step edge diffusion and is not of the Mullins-Sekerka type. Step bunching and wandering patterns at longer times are determined numerically by solving a set of coupled equations relating the velocity of a step to local properties of the step and its neighbors. We use a geometric representation of the step to derive a nonlinear evolution equation describing step wandering, which can explain experimental results where the peaks of the wandering steps align with the direction of the driving field.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Segmentation of RT3D Ultrasound with Implicit Deformable Models Without Gradients

This paper presents the implementation and validation of a new 3D deformable model method, based on the Mumford-Shah functional for segmentation of three-dimensional real-time ultrasound. An experiment on 10 patients with primary hypertension was carried out to compare three segmentation methods for quantification of right and left ventricular ejection fraction: (1) manual tracing by an expert cardiologist, (2) 2D parametric deformable model, and (3) 3D implicit deformable model implemented with a level set framework. Deformable model segmentations were performed on denoised data using a (3D+Time) brushlet expansion. The clinical study showed superior performance of the deformable model in assessing ejection fraction when compared to MRI measures. It also showed that the three-dimensional deformable model improved EF measures, which is explained by a more accurate segmentation of small and convoluted ventricular shapes when integrating the third spatial dimension

Coronary Occlusion Detection with 4D Optical Flow Based Strain Estimation on 4D Ultrasound

Real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) offers an efficient way to obtain complete 3D images of the heart over an entire cardiac cycle in just a few seconds. The complex 3D wall motion and temporal information contained in these 4D data sequences has the potential to enhance and supplement other imaging modalities for clinical diagnoses based on cardiac motion analysis. In our previous work, a 4D optical flow based method was developed to estimate dynamic cardiac metrics, including strains and displacements, from 4D ultrasound. In this study, in order to evaluate the ability of our method in detecting ischemic regions, coronary artery occlusion experiments at various locations were performed on five dogs. 4D ultrasound data acquired during these experiments were analyzed with our proposed method. Ischemic regions predicted by the outcome of strain measurements were compared to predictions from cardiac physiology with strong agreement. This is the first direct validation study of our image analysis method for biomechanical prediction and in vivo experimental outcome

Aspectos econômicos em sistemas de produção com culturas alimentares para agricultores de baixa renda na Microrregião Bragantina, Pará.

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Comparing Optical-Flow Based Methods for Quantification of Myocardial Deformations on RT3D Ultrasound

This paper presents a new homogeneity measure for variational segmentation with multiple level set functions. We propose to modify the quadratic homogeneity measure to trade off the convexity of the function against a faster rate of convergence. We tested in two series of experiments the performance of this new homogeneity force at converging to appropriate partitioning of brain MRI data sets, over a large range of image spatial resolution and image quality, in terms of tissue homogeneity and contrast