A Test of the Martingale Hypothesis

This paper proposes a statistical test of the martingale hypothesis. It can be used to test whether a given time series is a martingale process against certain non-martingale alternatives. The class of alternative processes against which our test has power is very general and it encompasses many nonlinear non-martingale processes which may not be detected using traditional spectrum-based or variance-ratio tests. We look at the hypothesis of martingale, in contrast with other existing methods which test for the hypothesis of martingale difference. Two different types of test are considered: one is a generalized Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the other is a Cramer-von Mises type test. For the processes that are first order Markovian in mean, in particular, our approach yields the test statistics that neither depend upon any smoothing parameter nor require any resampling procedure to simulate the null distributions. Their null limiting distributions are nicely characterized as functionals of a continuous stochastic process so that the critical values are easily tabulated. We prove consistency of our tests and further investigate their finite sample properties via simulation. Our tests are found to be rather powerful in moderate size samples against a wide variety of non-martingales including exponential autoregressive, threshold autoregressive, markov switching, chaotic, and some of nonstationary processes.

Thin Sectioning of Slice Preparations for Immunohistochemistry

Many investigations in neuroscience, as well as other disciplines, involve studying small, yet macroscopic pieces or sections of tissue that have been preserved, freshly removed, or excised but kept viable, as in slice preparations of brain tissue. Subsequent microscopic studies of this material can be challenging, as the tissue samples may be difficult to handle. Demonstrated here is a method for obtaining thin cryostat sections of tissue with a thickness that may range from 0.2-5.0 mm. We routinely cut 400 micron thick Vibratome brain slices serially into 5-10 micron coronal cryostat sections. The slices are typically first used for electrophysiology experiments and then require microscopic analysis of the cytoarchitecture of the region from which the recordings were observed. We have constructed a simple device that allows controlled and reproducible preparation and positioning of the tissue slice. This device consists of a cylinder 5 cm in length with a diameter of 1.2 cm, which serves as a freezing stage for the slice. A ring snugly slides over the cylinder providing walls around the slice allowing the tissue to be immersed in freezing compound (e.g., OCT). This is then quickly frozen with crushed dry ice and the resulting wafer can be position easily for cryostat sectioning. Thin sections can be thaw-mounted onto coated slides to allow further studies to be performed, such as various staining methods, in situ hybridization, or immunohistochemistry, as demonstrated here

Experimental Verification of Indirect Evaporative Cooling-Assisted Internally Cooled Liquid Desiccant Dehumidifier

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the system performance of an evaporative cooling assisted outdoor air system for air conditioning a data center. To evaluate the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) system used evaporative cooling technology, a mock-up for evaporative cooling assisted outdoor air system was designed. The feasibility of the evaporative cooling assisted outdoor air system is analysed by experimental test for a modular data center in Anseong, Korea. A mock-up system is designed by 43,000 m3/h of design fan flow, 160kW of the cooling capacity for air conditioning a data center. A design condition for the indirect evaporative cooler was set in 50% of sensible heat exchange efficiency and 65% of indirect evaporative cooling efficiency, respectively. A server rack simulator was installed to adjust the 160kW of sensible heat emission of modular data center. The experiment results show that the 59% of a sensible heat exchange efficiency and 78% of indirect evaporative cooling efficiency under experimental conditions

A Triple-Mode Performance-Optimized Reconfigurable Incremental ADC for Smart Sensor Applications

This paper proposes a triple-mode discrete-time incremental analog-to-digital converter (IADC) employing successive approximation register (SAR)-based zooming and extended counting (EC) schemes to achieve programmable trade-off capability of resolution and power consumption in various smart sensor applications. It mainly consists of an incremental delta???sigma modulator and the proposed SAR-EC sub-ADC for alternate operation of the coarse SAR conversion and EC. They can be reconfigured to operate separately depending on the application requirements. The SAR-based zooming structure allows the IADC to have better linearity and resolution, and additional activation of the EC function gives the further resolution. During this reconfigurable conversion process, pipelined reusing operation of sub-blocks reduces the silicon area and the number of cycles for target resolutions. A prototype ADC is fabricated in a 180-nm CMOS process, and its triple-mode operation of high-resolution, medium-resolution, and low-power is experimentally verified to achieve 116.1-, 109.4-, and 73.3-dB dynamic ranges, consuming 1.60, 1.26, and 0.39 mW, respectively

A 32kb 10T subthreshold SRAM array with bit-interleaving and differential read scheme in 90nm CMOS

We demonstrate a 10T subthreshold SRAM with an efficient bit-interleaving structure for soft-error tolerance and a differential read scheme for improved stability. The 32kb (256128) SRAM array is fabricated in 90nm CMOS and operates at 31.25kHz at 0.18V With more aggressive wordline boosting, the V DD can be reduced to 0.16V At the minimum VDD condition, the operating frequency is 500Hz and the power consumption is 0.123W

Templated native silk smectic gels

One aspect of the present invention relates to a method of preparing a fibrous protein smectic hydrogel by way of a solvent templating process, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; and collecting the resulting fibrous protein smectic hydrogel and allowing it to dry. Another aspect of the present invention relates to a method of obtaining predominantly one enantiomer from a racemic mixture, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; allowing the enantiomers of racemic mixture to diffuse selectively into the smectic hydrogel in solution; removing the smectic hydrogel from the solution; rinsing predominantly one enantiomer from the surface of the smectic hydrogel; and extracting predominantly one enantiomer from the interior of the smectic hydrogel. The present invention also relates to a smectic hydrogel prepared according to an aforementioned method

X-ray ejecta kinematics of the Galactic core-collapse supernova remnant G292.0+1.8

We report on the results from the analysis of our 114 ks Chandra HETGS observation of the Galactic core-collapse supernova remnant G292.0+1.8. To probe the 3D structure of the clumpy X-ray emitting ejecta material in this remnant, we measured Doppler shifts in emission lines from metal-rich ejecta knots projected at different radial distances from the expansion center. We estimate radial velocities of ejecta knots in the range of -2300 <~ v_r <~ 1400 km s^-1. The distribution of ejecta knots in velocity vs. projected-radius space suggests an expanding ejecta shell with a projected angular thickness of ~90" (corresponding to ~3 pc at d = 6 kpc). Based on this geometrical distribution of the ejecta knots, we estimate the location of the reverse shock approximately at the distance of ~4 pc from the center of the supernova remnant, putting it in close proximity to the outer boundary of the radio pulsar wind nebula. Based on our observed remnant dynamics and the standard explosion energy of 10^51 erg, we estimate the total ejecta mass to be <~ 8 M_sun, and we propose an upper limit of <~ 35 M_sun on the progenitor's mass.Comment: 5 figures, accepted by Ap

Templated Native Silk Smectic Gels

One aspect of the present invention relates to a method of preparing a fibrous protein smectic hydrogel by way of a solvent templating process, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; and collecting the resulting fibrous protein smectic hydrogel and allowing it to dry. Another aspect of the present invention relates to a method of obtaining predominantly one enantiomer from a racemic mixture, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; allowing the enantiomers of racemic mixture to diffuse selectively into the smectic hydrogel in solution; removing the smectic hydrogel from the solution; rinsing predominantly one enantiomer from the surface of the smectic hydrogel; and extracting predominantly one enantiomer from the interior of the smectic hydrogel. The present invention also relates to a smectic hydrogel prepared according to an aforementioned method

Templated Native Silk Smectic Gels

One aspect of the present invention relates to a method of preparing a fibrous protein smectic hydrogel by way of a solvent templating process, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; and collecting the resulting fibrous protein smectic hydrogel and allowing it to dry. Another aspect of the present invention relates to a method of obtaining predominantly one enantiomer from a racemic mixture, comprising the steps of pouring an aqueous fibrous protein solution into a container comprising a solvent that is not miscible with water; sealing the container and allowing it to age at about room temperature; allowing the enantiomers of racemic mixture to diffuse selectively into the smectic hydrogel in solution; removing the smectic hydrogel from the solution; rinsing predominantly one enantiomer from the surface of the smectic hydrogel; and extracting predominantly one enantiomer from the interior of the smectic hydrogel. The present invention also relates to a smectic hydrogel prepared according to an aforementioned method