940 research outputs found
Tensor fasciae latae muscle in human embryos and foetuses with special reference to its contribution to the development of the iliotibial tract
Background: The human tensor fasciae latae muscle (TFL) is inserted into the iliotibial tract and plays a critical role in lateral stabilisation of the hip joint. We previously described a candidate of the initial iliotibial tract that originated from the gluteus maximus muscle and extended distally.
Materials and methods: This study extended our observations by examining 30 human embryos and foetuses of gestational age (GA) 7–14 weeks (crown-to-rump length 24–108 mm). At GA 7 weeks, the TFL appeared as a small muscle mass floating in the subcutaneous tissue near the origins of the gluteus medius and rectus femoris muscles.
Results: Subsequently, the TFL obtained an iliac origin adjacent to the rectus femoris tendon, but the distal end remained a tiny fibrous mass on the vastus lateralis muscle. Until GA 10 weeks, the TFL muscle fibres were inserted into a vastus lateralis fascia that joined the quadriceps tendon distally. The next stage consisted of the TFL muscle belly “connecting” the vastus fascia and the gluteus fascia, including our previous candidate of the initial iliotibial tract. Until GA 14 weeks, the TFL was sandwiched by two laminae of the connecting fascia.
Conclusions: These findings suggested that, when the vastus lateralis fascia separated from the quadriceps tendon to attach to the tibia, possibly after birth, the resulting iliotibial tract would consist of a continuous longitudinal band from the gluteus maximus fascia, via the vastus fascia, to the tibia. Although it is a small muscle, the foetal TFL plays a critical role in the development of the iliotibial tract
Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Inverse Problems in Imaging
In this paper, we propose a novel deep convolutional neural network (CNN)-based algorithm for solving ill-posed inverse problems. Regularized iterative algorithms have emerged as the standard approach to ill-posed inverse problems in the past few decades. These methods produce excellent results, but can be challenging to deploy in practice due to factors including the high computational cost of the forward and adjoint operators and the difficulty of hyperparameter selection. The starting point of this paper is the observation that unrolled iterative methods have the form of a CNN (filtering followed by pointwise nonlinearity) when the normal operator H, where is the adjoint of the forward imaging operator, H) of the forward model is a convolution. Based on this observation, we propose using direct inversion followed by a CNN to solve normal-convolutional inverse problems. The direct inversion encapsulates the physical model of the system, but leads to artifacts when the problem is ill posed; the CNN combines multiresolution decomposition and residual learning in order to learn to remove these artifacts while preserving image structure. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed network in sparse-view reconstruction (down to 50 views) on parallel beam X-ray computed tomography in synthetic phantoms as well as in real experimental sinograms. The proposed network outperforms total variation-regularized iterative reconstruction for the more realistic phantoms and requires less than a second to reconstruct a 512 × 512 image on the GPU
Implicações das prioridades de gasto do estado sobre a dinâmica econômica brasileira
XX Encontro Nacional de Economia Política: desenvolvimento Latino-Americano, Integração e Inserção Internacional - UNILA, Foz do Iguaçu, 26 a 29 de maio de 2015A sociedade brasileira tem passado, nas últimas décadas, por
transformações importantes em seu contexto político e econômico. Este
artigo trata principalmente de dois fatos que ainda, atualmente, impactam
na dinâmica do gasto público. O processo de redemocratização, em
fi nais dos anos de 1980 e a globalização econômica com a consequente
fi nanceirização dos mercados. Estas transformações infl uenciam a
forma de atuação do Estado na economia, principalmente no que se
refere à defi nição de alocação de recursos públicos. Assim, este artigo
aprofunda o entendimento da evolução das despesas públicas na esfera
federal, pela análise dos gastos sociais bem como da dívida pública,
constatando os impactos econômicos destas despesas e levantando
conclusões sobre a viabilidade de determinados gastos governamentais
sob a dinâmica econômica e social do país. A realização deste estudo
contribui para o debate sobre as estratégias de política fi scal que vêm
sendo adotadas e o impacto de priorização de determinados gastos,
sobre o crescimento econômico do paísBanco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES); Usina Hidrelétrica de Itaipu (ITAIPU); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) e Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA
Optical Investigations of Charge Gap in Orbital Ordered La1/2Sr3/2MnO4
Temperature and polarization dependent electronic structure of La1/2Sr3/2MnO4
were investigated by optical conductivity analyses. With decreasing
temperature, for E//ab, a broad mid-infrared (MIR) peak of La1/2Sr3/2MnO4
becomes narrower and moves to the higher frequency, while that of
Nd1/2Sr3/2MnO4 nearly temperature independent. We showed that the MIR peak in
La1/2Sr3/2MnO4 originates from orbital ordering associated with CE-type
magnetic ordering and that the Jahn-Teller distortion has a significant
influence on the width and the position of the MIR peak.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Melting of Charge/Orbital Ordered States in NdSrMnO: Temperature and Magnetic Field Dependent Optical Studies
We investigated the temperature ( 15 290 K) and the magnetic
field ( 0 17 T) dependent optical conductivity spectra of a
charge/orbital ordered manganite, NdSrMnO. With variation
of and , large spectral weight changes were observed up to 4.0 eV. These
spectral weight changes could be explained using the polaron picture.
Interestingly, our results suggested that some local ordered state might remain
above the charge ordering temperature, and that the charge/orbital melted state
at a high magnetic field (i.e. at 17 T and 4.2 K) should be a three
dimensional ferromagnetic metal. We also investigated the first order phase
transition from the charge/orbital ordered state to ferromagnetic metallic
state using the - and % -dependent dielectric constants . In
the charge/orbital ordered insulating state, was positive and
. With increasing and , was
increased up to the insulator-metal phase boundaries. And then,
abruptly changed into negative and , which was
consistent with typical responses of a metal. Through the analysis of using an effective medium approximation, we found that the melting
of charge/orbital ordered states should occur through the percolation of
ferromagnetic metal domains.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.
Assessing How Pre-requisite Skills Affect Learning of Advanced Concepts
Students often struggle with advanced computing courses, and comparatively few studies have looked into the reasons for this. It seems that learners do not master the most basic concepts, or forget them between courses. If so, remedial practice could improve learning, but instructors rightly will not use scarce time for this without strong evidence. Based on personal observation, program tracing seems to be an important pre-requisite skill, but there is yet little research that provides evidence for this observation. To investigate this, our group will create theory-based assessments on how tracing knowledge affects learning of advanced topics, such as data structures, algorithms, and concurrency. This working group will identify relevant concepts in advanced courses, then conceptually analyze their pre-requisites and where an imagined student with some tracing difficulties would encounter barriers. The group will use this theory to create instructor-usable assessments for advanced topics that also identify issues caused by poor pre-requisite knowledge. These assessments may then be used at the start and end of advanced courses to evaluate to what extent students\u2019 difficulties with the advanced course originate from poor pre-requisite knowledge
Colossal magnetooptical conductivity in doped manganites
We show that the current carrier density collapse in doped manganites, which
results from bipolaron formation in the paramagnetic phase, leads to a colossal
change of the optical conductivity in an external magnetic field at
temperatures close to the ferromagnetic transition. As with the colossal
magnetoresistance (CMR) itself, the corresponding magnetooptical effect is
explained by the dissociation of localized bipolarons into mobile polarons
owing to the exchange interaction with the localized Mn spins in the
ferromagnetic phase. The effect is positive at low frequencies and negative in
the high-frequency region. The present results agree with available
experimental observations.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX 3.0, two eps-figures included in the tex
Ground state properties of ferromagnetic metal/conjugated polymer interfaces
We theoretically investigate the ground state properties of ferromagnetic
metal/conjugated polymer interfaces. The work is partially motivated by recent
experiments in which injection of spin polarized electrons from ferromagnetic
contacts into thin films of conjugated polymers was reported. We use a
one-dimensional nondegenerate Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) Hamiltonian to
describe the conjugated polymer and one-dimensional tight-binding models to
describe the ferromagnetic metal. We consider both a model for a conventional
ferromagnetic metal, in which there are no explicit structural degrees of
freedom, and a model for a half-metallic ferromagnetic colossal
magnetoresistance (CMR) oxide which has explicit structural degrees of freedom.
The Fermi energy of the magnetic metallic contact is adjusted to control the
degree of electron transfer into the polymer. We investigate electron charge
and spin transfer from the ferromagnetic metal to the organic polymer, and
structural relaxation near the interface. Bipolarons are the lowest energy
charge state in the bulk polymer for the nondegenerate SSH model Hamiltonian.
As a result electrons (or holes) transferred into the bulk of the polymer form
spinless bipolarons. However, there can be spin density in the polymer
localized near the interface.Comment: 7 figure
Summary scores captured changes in subjects' QoL as measured by the multiple scales of the EORTC QLQ-C30
Argon annealing of the oxygen-isotope exchanged manganite La_{0.8}Ca_{0.2}MnO_{3+y}
We have resolved a controversial issue concerning the oxygen-isotope shift of
the ferromagnetic transition temperature T_{C} in the manganite
La_{0.8}Ca_{0.2}MnO_{3+y}. We show that the giant oxygen-isotope shift of T_C
observed in the normal oxygen-isotope exchanged samples is indeed intrinsic,
while a much smaller shift observed in the argon annealed samples is an
artifact. The argon annealing causes the 18O sample to partially exchange back
to the 16O isotope due to a small 16O contamination in the Ar gas. Such a
contamination is commonly caused by the oxygen outgas that is trapped in the
tubes, connectors and valves. The present results thus umambiguously
demonstrate that the observed large oxygen isotope effect is an intrinsic
property of manganites, and places an important constraint on the basic physics
of these materials.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR
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