Amplitude and Phase Statistics of Multi-look SAR Complex Interferogram

Amplitude and phase statistics of SAR complex interferogram are significant in the study of interferometry and polarimetry. To reduce statistical variations, multi-look processing is adopted by averaging spatially the complex interferogram. In this study, we derive and validate three kinds of probability density functions (PDFs) of multi-look interferogram for different surface feature scenes. For simple homogeneous areas with the gamma distribution intensity, a concise product-form interferometry phase PDF is derived, which is equivalent to a conventional Gauss hypergeometric PDF. For complicated areas with the K and G0 distributions intensity, two new interferometry amplitude PDFs named as Gamma-K and Gamma-G are proposed, and their phase PDFs are approximately preserved. Finally three typical areas including grass, mountain, and city are picked out from a pair of RADARSAT-2 SAR images and studied. Experimental results indicate good agreement between the computed histograms and the theoretical distributions. The results obtained can be applied to the feature classification of polarisation SAR data and the estimation of decorrelation effect of interferometric SAR.Science Journal, Vol. 64, No. 6, November 2014, pp.564-570, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.64.474

1-[(1,3-Dithio­lan-2-yl)meth­yl]-6-methyl-8-nitro-1,2,3,5,6,7-hexa­hydro­imidazo[1,2-c]pyrimidine

In the title compound, C11H18N4O2S2, the dithiol­ane ring displays an envelope conformation, the tetra­hydro­pyrimidine ring has a conformation that is between half-chair and screw-boat, and the imidazole ring is essentially planar (r.m.s. deviation = 0.0017 Å). No significant directional inter­molecular inter­actions are present in the structure

Recovering fitness gradients for interprocedural Boolean flags in search-based testing

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under Corp Lab @ University scheme; National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its NSoE Programm

The Adsorption Capacity, Pore Structure, and Thermal Behavior of the Modified Clay Containing SSA

Sewage sludge ash (SSA) was created by burning municipal sludge. The potential of clay containing 1 or 3 or 5% SSA was assessed for use as a landfill liner-soil material. Batch adsorption, low temperature N2 adsorption, and TG-DTA tests were performed to evaluate the adsorption capacity, micropore structure, thermostability, and components of soils under Cr(VI) and Pb(II) chemical solutions. With the increasing amount of SSA in modified clay, the adsorption capacity of Cr(VI) and Pb(II) to the modified clay increases gradually. After absorption, the pore size of modified clay ranges from 2 nm to 8 nm. With the increasing amount of absorption, the pore volume decreases and the specific surface area increases. With the increasing of adsorption concentration of Cr(VI) and Pb(II), the mass loss percentage of modified clay increases to 23.4% and 12.6%, respectively. The modified clay containing SSA may be used as a good barrier material to attenuate contamination of Cr(VI) and Pb(II) in landfills

Human MicroRNA Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressors Show Significantly Different Biological Patterns: From Functions to Targets

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs which play essential roles in many important biological processes. Therefore, their dysfunction is associated with a variety of human diseases, including cancer. Increasing evidence shows that miRNAs can act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors, and although there is great interest in research into these cancer-associated miRNAs, little is known about them. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of putative human miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. We found that miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors clearly show different patterns in function, evolutionary rate, expression, chromosome distribution, molecule size, free energy, transcription factors, and targets. For example, miRNA oncogenes are located mainly in the amplified regions in human cancers, whereas miRNA tumor suppressors are located mainly in the deleted regions. miRNA oncogenes tend to cleave target mRNAs more frequently than miRNA tumor suppressors. These results indicate that these two types of cancer-associated miRNAs play different roles in cancer formation and development. Moreover, the patterns identified here can discriminate novel miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors with a high degree of accuracy. This study represents the first large-scale bioinformatic analysis of human miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. Our findings provide help for not only understanding of miRNAs in cancer but also for the specific identification of novel miRNAs as miRNA oncogenes and tumor suppressors. In addition, the data presented in this study will be valuable for the study of both miRNAs and cancer

Break the dead end of dynamic slicing: localizing data and control omission bug

Dynamic slicing is a common way of identifying the root cause when a program fault is revealed. With the dynamic slicing technique, the programmers can follow data and control flow along the program execution trace to the root cause. However, the technique usually fails to work on omission bugs, i.e., the faults which are caused by missing executing some code. In many cases, dynamic slicing over-skips the root cause when an omission bug happens, leading the debugging process to a dead end. In this work, we conduct an empirical study on the omission bugs in the Defects4J bug repository. Our study shows that (1) omission bugs are prevalent (46.4%) among all the studied bugs; (2) there are repeating patterns on causes and fixes of the omission bugs; (3) the patterns of fixing omission bugs serve as a strong hint to break the slicing dead end. Based on our findings, we train a neural network model on the omission bugs in Defects4J repository to recommend where to approach when slicing can no long work. We conduct an experiment by applying our approach on 3193 mutated omission bugs which slicing fails to locate. The results show that our approach outperforms random benchmark on breaking the dead end and localizing the mutated omission bugs (63.8% over 2.8%).No Full Tex

Chronic treatment with anesthetic propofol attenuates β-amyloid protein levels in brain tissues of aged mice

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. At the present time, however, AD still lacks effective treatments. Our recent studies showed that chronic treatment with anesthetic propofol attenuated brain caspase-3 activation and improved cognitive function in aged mice. Accumulation of β-amyloid protein (Aβ) is a major component of the neuropathogenesis of AD dementia and cognitive impairment. We therefore set out to determine the effects of chronic treatment with propofol on Aβ levels in brain tissues of aged mice. Propofol (50 mg/kg) was administrated to aged (18 month-old) wild-type mice once a week for 8 weeks. The brain tissues of mice were harvested one day after the final propofol treatment. The harvested brain tissues were then subjected to enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot analysis. Here we report that the propofol treatment reduced Aβ (Aβ40 and Aβ42) levels in the brain tissues of the aged mice. Moreover, the propofol treatment decreased the levels of β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme (the enzyme for Aβ generation), and increased the levels of neprilysin (the enzyme for Aβ degradation) in the brain tissues of the aged mice. These results suggested that the chronic treatment with propofol might reduce brain Aβ levels potentially via decreasing brain levels of β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme, thus decreasing Aβ generation; and via increasing brain neprilysin levels, thus increasing Aβ degradation. These preliminary findings from our pilot studies have established a system and postulated a new hypothesis for future research

Material‐Independent 3D Patterning Via Two‐Photon Lithography and Discontinuous Wetting

The fabrication of complex 3D structures composed of micrometer-sized features made of different functional materials is an immensely important and yet highly challenging task. Here, a method is developed to fabricate multimaterial 3D structures with micrometer precision by combining macroscopic 3D printing (digital light processing), with two-photon lithography (2PL) and material-independent discontinuous dewetting. Specifically, 3D inherently superhydrophobic objects are first printed by DLP, followed by creating hydrophilic micropatterns on their surface using 2PL. By exploiting the effect of discontinuous wetting, the selective deposition of solutions of functional materials into microscopic hydrophilic regions on the surface of 3D structures, with high resolution and great design flexibility is demonstrated. Importantly, the method is material-independent and enables the micropatterning of a variety of functional materials dispersed in aqueous solutions including polydopamine, silica, or Ag nanoparticles. As an exemplary application, it is shown that conductive Ag electrodes can be created on the curved surface of 3D-printed objects to construct structural electronics. The flexibility, high resolution, and material diversity in designing multimaterial 3D structures open exciting new functionalities and possibilities in a variety of applications including advanced electronics, soft robotics, and chemical or bioengineering