641 research outputs found
Higher Order Variational Integrators: a polynomial approach
We reconsider the variational derivation of symplectic partitioned
Runge-Kutta schemes. Such type of variational integrators are of great
importance since they integrate mechanical systems with high order accuracy
while preserving the structural properties of these systems, like the
symplectic form, the evolution of the momentum maps or the energy behaviour.
Also they are easily applicable to optimal control problems based on mechanical
systems as proposed in Ober-Bl\"obaum et al. [2011].
Following the same approach, we develop a family of variational integrators
to which we refer as symplectic Galerkin schemes in contrast to symplectic
partitioned Runge-Kutta. These two families of integrators are, in principle
and by construction, different one from the other. Furthermore, the symplectic
Galerkin family can as easily be applied in optimal control problems, for which
Campos et al. [2012b] is a particular case.Comment: 12 pages, 1 table, 23rd Congress on Differential Equations and
Applications, CEDYA 201
Discrete Variational Optimal Control
This paper develops numerical methods for optimal control of mechanical
systems in the Lagrangian setting. It extends the theory of discrete mechanics
to enable the solutions of optimal control problems through the discretization
of variational principles. The key point is to solve the optimal control
problem as a variational integrator of a specially constructed
higher-dimensional system. The developed framework applies to systems on
tangent bundles, Lie groups, underactuated and nonholonomic systems with
symmetries, and can approximate either smooth or discontinuous control inputs.
The resulting methods inherit the preservation properties of variational
integrators and result in numerically robust and easily implementable
algorithms. Several theoretical and a practical examples, e.g. the control of
an underwater vehicle, will illustrate the application of the proposed
approach.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure
Discrete Nonholonomic Lagrangian Systems on Lie Groupoids
This paper studies the construction of geometric integrators for nonholonomic
systems. We derive the nonholonomic discrete Euler-Lagrange equations in a
setting which permits to deduce geometric integrators for continuous
nonholonomic systems (reduced or not). The formalism is given in terms of Lie
groupoids, specifying a discrete Lagrangian and a constraint submanifold on it.
Additionally, it is necessary to fix a vector subbundle of the Lie algebroid
associated to the Lie groupoid. We also discuss the existence of nonholonomic
evolution operators in terms of the discrete nonholonomic Legendre
transformations and in terms of adequate decompositions of the prolongation of
the Lie groupoid. The characterization of the reversibility of the evolution
operator and the discrete nonholonomic momentum equation are also considered.
Finally, we illustrate with several classical examples the wide range of
application of the theory (the discrete nonholonomic constrained particle, the
Suslov system, the Chaplygin sleigh, the Veselova system, the rolling ball on a
rotating table and the two wheeled planar mobile robot).Comment: 45 page
Is tagging with visual implant elastomer a reliable technique for marking earthworms?
Visual implant elastomer (VIE) has recently been employed to investigate different aspects of earthworm ecology. However, a number of fundamental questions relating to the detection and positioning of the tag, its persistence and potential effects on earthworms remain unknown. Seven earthworm species belonging to three ecological groupings, with different pigmentation and burrowing behaviour, were tagged using different coloured VIE. External inspection after two days, one week and 1, 10 and 27 months were followed by preservation, dissection and internal inspection. Tags could be seen in living specimens to 27 months, and dissection revealed that in most cases they were lodged in the coelomic cavity, held in place by septa. However, over longer time periods (more than two years), the chlorogogenous tissue tended to bind to the tags and made external observation increasingly difficult. Migration of the VIE material towards the posterior of the earthworm and potential loss of the tag were only observed on rare occasions, and a recovery rate in excess of 98% was recorded. By introducing a reasonable amount of VIE into segments, just after the clitellum, this technique can become a valuable tool in earthworm ecology and life history studies, particularly in short-medium term laboratory and field experiments
High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging reveals nuclei of the human amygdala: manual segmentation to automatic atlas
Available online 4 May 2017The amygdala is composed of multiple nuclei with unique functions and connections in the limbic system and to the rest of the brain. However, standard in vivo neuroimaging tools to automatically delineate the amygdala into its multiple nuclei are still rare. By scanning postmortem specimens at high resolution (100â150 ”m) at 7 T field strength (n = 10), we were able to visualize and label nine amygdala nuclei (anterior amygdaloid, cortico-amygdaloid transition area; basal, lateral, accessory basal, central, cortical medial, paralaminar nuclei). We created an atlas from these labels using a recently developed atlas building algorithm based on Bayesian inference. This atlas, which will be released as part of FreeSurfer, can be used to automatically segment nine amygdala nuclei from a standard resolution structural MR image. We applied this atlas to two publicly available datasets (ADNI and ABIDE) with standard resolution T1 data, used individual volumetric data of the amygdala nuclei as the measure and found that our atlas i) discriminates between Alzheimer's disease participants and age-matched control participants with 84% accuracy (AUC=0.915), and ii) discriminates between individuals with autism and age-, sex- and IQ-matched neurotypically developed control participants with 59.5% accuracy (AUC=0.59). For both datasets, the new ex vivo atlas significantly outperformed (all p < .05) estimations of the whole amygdala derived from the segmentation in FreeSurfer 5.1 (ADNI: 75%, ABIDE: 54% accuracy), as well as classification based on whole amygdala volume (using the sum of all amygdala nuclei volumes; ADNI: 81%, ABIDE: 55% accuracy). This new atlas and the segmentation tools that utilize it will provide neuroimaging researchers with the ability to explore the function and connectivity of the human amygdala nuclei with unprecedented detail in healthy adults as well as those with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders.This work was supported by the PHS grant DA023427 and NICHD/
NIH grant F32HD079169 (Z.M.S); Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Fellowship
of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (D.K.); R21(MH106796),
R21 (AG046657) and K01AG28521 (J.C.A.), the National Cancer
Institute (1K25CA181632-01) as well as the Genentech Foundation (M.R.); the European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie
grant agreement No 654911 (project âTHALAMODELâ) and ERC Starting
Grant agreement No 677697 (project âBUNGEE-TOOLSâ); and the
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) reference
TEC2014-51882-P (J.E.I.); and the NVIDIA hardware award (M.R. and
J.E.I.). Further support for this research was provided in part by
the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
(P41EB015896, R01EB006758, R21EB018907, R01EB019956, R01-
EB013565), the National Institute on Aging (5R01AG008122,
R01AG016495), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and
Kidney Diseases (1-R21-DK-108277-01), the National Institute for
Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS0525851, R21NS072652,
R01NS070963, R01NS083534, 5U01NS086625), the Massachusetts
ADRC (P50AG005134) and was made possible by the resources provided
by Shared Instrumentation Grants 1S10RR023401, 1S10RR019307, and
1S10RR023043. Additional support was provided by the NIH Blueprint
for Neuroscience Research (5U01-MH093765), part of the multi-institutional
Human Connectome Project. In addition, BF has a financial interest
in CorticoMetrics, a company whose medical pursuits focus on brain
imaging and measurement technologies. BF's interests were reviewed and
are managed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare
in accordance with their conflict of interest policies.
The collection and sharing of the ADNI MRI data used in the
evaluation was funded by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging
Initiative (ADNI) (National Institutes of Health Grant U01 AG024904)
and DOD ADNI (Department of Defense award number W81XWH-12-2-
0012). ADNI is funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National
Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and through generous
contributions from the following: Alzheimer's Association;
Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation; BioClinica, Inc.; Biogen Idec
Inc.; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Eisai Inc.; Elan Pharmaceuticals,
Inc.; Eli Lilly and Company; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and its affiliated
company Genentech, Inc.; GE Healthcare; Innogenetics, N.V.; IXICO Ltd.;
Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy Research & Development, LLC.;
Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC.;
Medpace, Inc.; Merck & Co., Inc.; Meso Scale Diagnostics, LLC.;
NeuroRx Research; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; Pfizer Inc.;
Piramal Imaging; Servier; Synarc Inc.; and Takeda Pharmaceutical
Company. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is providing funds
to support ADNI clinical sites in Canada. Private sector contributions are
facilitated by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (www.
fnih.org). The grantee organization is the Northern California Institute for
Research and Education, and the study is coordinated by the Alzheimer's
Disease Cooperative Study at the University of California, San Diego.
ADNI data are disseminated by the Laboratory for Neuro Imaging at the
University of Southern California
Comparison of the h-index for different fields of research using bootstrap methodology
An important disadvantage of the h-index is that typically it cannot take into account the specific field of research of a researcher. Usually sample point estimates of the average and median h-index values for the various fields are reported that are highly variable and dependent of the specific samples and it would be useful to provide confidence intervals of prediction accuracy. In this paper we apply the non-parametric bootstrap technique for constructing confidence intervals for the h-index for different fields of research. In this way no specific assumptions about the distribution of the empirical h-index are required as well as no large samples since that the methodology is based on resampling from the initial sample. The results of the analysis showed important differences between the various fields. The performance of the bootstrap intervals for the mean and median h-index for most fields seems to be rather satisfactory as revealed by the performed simulation
Unusual magnetic relaxation behavior in La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3
We have carried out a systematic magnetic relaxation study, measured after
applying and switching off a 5 T magnetic field to polycrystalline samples of
La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3. The long time logarithmic relaxation rate
(LTLRR), decreased from 10 K to 150 K and increased from 150 K to 195 K in
La0.5Ca0.5MnO3. This change in behavior was found to be related to the complete
suppression of the antiferromagnetic phase above 150 K and in the presence of a
5 T magnetic field. At 195 K, the magnetization first decreased, and after a
few minutes increased slowly as a function of time. Moreover, between 200 K and
245 K, the magnetization increased throughout the measured time span. The
change in the slope of the curves, from negative to positive at about 200 K was
found to be related to the suppression of antiferromagnetic fluctuations in
small magnetic fields. A similar temperature dependence of the LTLRR was found
for the Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3 sample. However, the temperature where the LTLRR reached
the minimum in Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3 was lower than that of La0.5Ca0.5MnO3. This
result agrees with the stronger ferromagnetic interactions that exist in
Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3 in comparison to La0.5Ca0.5MnO3. The above measurements
suggested that the general temperature dependence of the LTLRR and the
underlying physics were mainly independent of the particular charge ordering
system considered. All relaxation curves could be fitted using a logarithmic
law at long times. This slow relaxation was attributed to the coexistence of
ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions between Mn ions, which
produced a distribution of energy barriers.Comment: Accepted to PRB as a regular article, 10 figures, Scheduled Issue: 01
June 200
Crop loading studies on âCariciaâ and âEvaâ apples grown in a mild winter area
The crop load level of an apple (Malus Ă domestica Borkh.) tree impacts fruit yield and quality parameters, tree vigor and biennial bearing. The optimal crop load is that which allows for consistent annual cropping and fruit quality acceptable to the market. We evaluated the effect of crop load on yield and fruit quality of two low-chill apples cv. âCariciaâ and âEvaâ, growing in a mild winter area. During 2010 and 2011 crop load was manually adjusted from 2 or 3 to 17 fruits cmâ2 of trunk cross-sectional area (TCSA). Fruit yield was positively related to crop load in both cultivars but mean fruit weight diminished as the crop load increased. For both cultivars, the production of non-commercial and small-sized fruit increased, whereas production of middle-sized fruit diminished as the fruit load increased. Shoot length was not affected by crop load in âEvaâ whereas it was reduced in âCariciaâ. Red skin color (RSC %) had a quadratic response to crop load in âCariciaâ. On the other hand, the RSC % of âEvaâ fruit was adjusted to a negative logarithmic model as an effect of crop load increment. No biennial bearing was observed in either cultivar. This research study suggests that the maximum limit of crop load for both cultivars is 7 fruits cmâ2 of TCSA, and the lower limit of crop load was 3 fruits cmâ2 of TCSA for âEvaâ and 5 fruits cmâ2 of TCSA for âCariciaâ
A Generalization of Chaplygin's Reducibility Theorem
In this paper we study Chaplygin's Reducibility Theorem and extend its
applicability to nonholonomic systems with symmetry described by the
Hamilton-Poincare-d'Alembert equations in arbitrary degrees of freedom. As
special cases we extract the extension of the Theorem to nonholonomic Chaplygin
systems with nonabelian symmetry groups as well as Euler-Poincare-Suslov
systems in arbitrary degrees of freedom. In the latter case, we also extend the
Hamiltonization Theorem to nonholonomic systems which do not possess an
invariant measure. Lastly, we extend previous work on conditionally variational
systems using the results above. We illustrate the results through various
examples of well-known nonholonomic systems.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Reg. and Chaotic Dy
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