Stress Response in Confined Arrays of Frictional and Frictionless Particles

Stress transmission inside three dimensional granular packings is investigated using computer simulations. Localized force perturbation techniques are implemented for frictionless and frictional shallow, ordered, granular arrays confined by solid boundaries for a range of system sizes. Stress response profiles for frictional packings agree well with the predictions for the semi-infinite half plane of classical isotropic elasticity theory down to boxes of linear dimensions of approximately forty particle diameters and over several orders of magnitude in the applied force. The response profiles for frictionless packings exhibit a transitional regime to strongly anisotropic features with increasing box size. The differences between the nature of the stress response are shown to be characterized by very different particle displacement fields.Comment: To appear in J. Sta

Emitter Location Finding using Particle Swarm Optimization

Using several spatially separated receivers, nowadays positioning techniques, which are implemented to determine the location of the transmitter, are often required for several important disciplines such as military, security, medical, and commercial applications. In this study, localization is carried out by particle swarm optimization using time difference of arrival. In order to increase the positioning accuracy, time difference of arrival averaging based two new methods are proposed. Results are compared with classical algorithms and Cramer-Rao lower bound which is the theoretical limit of the estimation error

Critical-like Features of Stress Response in Frictional Packings

The mechanical response of static, unconfined, overcompressed face centred cubic, granular arrays is studied using large-scale, discrete element method simulations. Specifically, the stress response due to the application of a localised force perturbation - the Green function technique - is obtained in granular packings generated over several orders of magnitude in both the particle friction coefficient and the applied forcing. We observe crossover behaviour in the mechanical state of the system characterised by the changing nature of the resulting stress response. The transition between anisotropic and isotropic stress response exhibits critical-like features through the identification of a diverging length scale that distinguishes the spatial extent of anisotropic regions from those that display isotropic behaviour. A multidimensional phase diagram is constructed that parameterises the response of the system due to changing friction and force perturbations.Comment: To appear in J. Sta

Obesity Induces Hypothalamic Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Impairs Proopiomelanocortin (POMC) Post-translational Processing

It was shown previously that abnormal prohormone processing or inactive proconverting enzymes that are responsible for this processing cause profound obesity. Our laboratory demonstrated earlier that in the diet-induced obesity (DIO) state, the appetite-suppressing neuropeptide -melanocyte-stimulating hormone ( -MSH) is reduced, yet the mRNA of its precursor protein proopiomelanocortin (POMC) remained unaltered. It was also shown that the DIO condition promotes the development of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and leptin resistance. In the current study, using an in vivo model combined with in vitro experiments, we demonstrate that obesity-induced ER stress obstructs the post-translational processing of POMC by decreasing proconverting enzyme 2, which catalyzes the conversion of adrenocorticotropin to -MSH, thereby decreasing -MSH peptide production. This novel mechanism of ER stress affecting POMC processing in DIO highlights the importance of ER stress in regulating central energy balance in obesity.Fil: Cakir, Isin. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Cyr, Nicole E.. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Perello, Mario. Brown University; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Litvinov, Bogdan Patedakis. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Romero, Amparo. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Stuart, Ronald C.. Brown University; Estados UnidosFil: Nillni, Eduardo A.. Brown University; Estados Unido

Anomalous single production of the fourth SM family quarks at Tevatron

Possible single productions of fourth family u_{4} and d_{4} quarks via anomalous q_{4}qV interactions at Tevatron are studied. Signature of such processes are discussed and compared with the recent results from Tevatron.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 4 table

Mel- and Mellin-Cepstral Feature Extraction Algorithms for Face Recognition

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In this article, an image feature extraction method based on two-dimensional (2D) Mellin cepstrum is introduced. The concept of one-dimensional (1D) mel-cepstrum that is widely used in speech recognition is extended to two-dimensions using both the ordinary 2D Fourier transform and the Mellin transform. The resultant feature matrices are applied to two different classifiers such as common matrix approach and support vector machine to test the performance of the mel-cepstrum- and Mellin-cepstrum-based features. The AR face image database, ORL database, Yale database and FRGC database are used in experimental studies, which indicate that recognition rates obtained by the 2D mel-cepstrum-based method are superior to that obtained using 2D principal component analysis, 2D Fourier-Mellin transform and ordinary image matrix-based face recognition in both classifiers. Experimental results indicate that 2D cepstral analysis can also be used in other image feature extraction problems