Decomposing sensorimotor variability changes in ageing and their connection to falls in older people

The relationship between sensorimotor variability and falls in older people has not been well investigated. We developed a novel task having shared biomechanics of obstacle negotiation to quantify sensorimotor variability related to locomotion across age. We found that sensorimotor variability in foot placement increases continuously with age. We then applied sensory psychophysics to pinpoint the visual and somatosensory systems associated with sensorimotor variability. We showed increased sensory variability, specifically increased proprioceptive variability, the vital cause of more variable foot placement in older people (greater than 65 years). Notably, older participants relied more on the vision to judge their own foot’s height compared to the young, suggesting a shift in multisensory integration strategy to compensate for degenerated proprioception. We further modelled the probability of tripping-over based on the relationship between sensorimotor variability and age and found a correspondence between model prediction and community-based data. We reveal increased sensorimotor variability, modulated by sensation precision, a potentially vital mechanism of raised tripping-over and thus fall events in older people. Analysis of sensorimotor variability and its specific components, may have the utility of fall risk and rehabilitation target evaluation

Monitoring sessile droplet evaporation on a micromechanical device.

A bulk acoustic mode micro-electro-mechanical dual resonator platform is utilised to study the evaporation of sub-microliter water droplets from the surface of the resonator. An analytical formulation for the observed frequency shift and the measure dependence of resonant frequency on the modes of evaporation which is consistent with the optically derived data. The resonators access only a thin layer of the liquid through shear contact and, hence, the response is not affected by the bulk mass of the droplet to first order. A relationship between the droplet contact area and the elapsed time was established for the evaporation process and is used to derive a value of the diffusion coefficient of water in air that is found to be in reasonable agreement with literature values. This work introduces a new tool for the electro-mechanical monitoring of droplet evaporation with relevance to applications such as biosensing in liquid samples of sub-microliter volumes.Funding from the Royal Society and the Cambridge Trusts is acknowledged.This is the accepted manuscript version. The final version is available from the RSC at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/an/c4an01389a#!divAbstract

Dynamics and spectrum of the Cesàro operator on C-infinity(R+)

[EN] The spectrum and point spectrum of the Cesaro averaging operator C acting on the Frechet space C-infinity(R+) of all C-infinity functions on the interval [0, infinity) are determined. We employ an approach via C-0-semigroup theory for linear operators. A spectral mapping theorem for the resolvent of a closed operator acting on a locally convex space is established; it constitutes a useful tool needed to establish the main result. The dynamical behaviour of C is also investigated.The research of the first two authors was partially supported by the projects MTM2013-43540-P, GVA Prometeo II/2013/013 and GVA ACOMP/2015/186 (Spain).Albanese, AA.; Bonet Solves, JA.; Ricker, WJ. (2016). Dynamics and spectrum of the Cesàro operator on C-infinity(R+). Monatshefte für Mathematik. 181:267-283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00605-015-0863-zS267283181Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Mean ergodic operators in Fréchet spaces. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 34, 401–436 (2009)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Mean ergodic semigroups of operators. Rev. R. Acad. Cien. Serie A Mat. RACSAM 106, 299–319 (2012)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Montel resolvents and uniformly mean ergodic semigroups of linear operators. Quaest. Math. 36, 253–290 (2013)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Convergence of arithmetic means of operators in Fréchet spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 401, 160–173 (2013)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Uniform mean ergodicity of $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroups in a class of in Fréchet spaces. Funct. Approx. Comment. Math. 50, 307–349 (2014)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: On the continuous Cesàro operator in certain function spaces. Positivity 19, 659–679 (2015)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: The Cesàro operator in the Fréchet spaces $$\ell ^{p+}$$ ℓ p + and $$L^{p-}$$ L p - . Glasgow Math. J. (accepted)Arendt, W.: Gaussian estimates and interpolation of the spectrum in $$L^p$$ L p . Diff. Int. Equ. 7, 1153–1168 (1994)Bayart, F., Matheron, E.: Dynamics of linear operators. Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, vol. 179. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009)Boyd, D.W.: The spectrum of the Cesàro operator. Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 29, 31–34 (1968)Grosse-Erdmann, K.G., Manguillot, A.P.: Linear chaos. Universitext, Springer Verlag, London (2011)Hille, E.: Remarks on ergodic theorems. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 57, 246–269 (1945)Jarchow, H.: Locally convex spaces. Teubner, Stuttgart (1981)Komura, T.: Semigroups of operators in locally convex spaces. J. Funct. Anal. 2, 258–296 (1968)Lin, M.: On the uniform ergodic theorem. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 43, 337–340 (1974)Malgrange, B.: Idéaux de fonctions différentiables et division des distributions. Distributions, Editions École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, pp. 1–21 (2003)Meise, R., Vogt, D.: Introduction to functional analysis. Oxford Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 2. The Clarendon Press. Oxford University Press, New York (1997)Seeley, R.T.: Extension of $$C^\infty$$ C ∞ functions defined in a half space. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 15, 625–626 (1964)Siskakis, A.G.: Composition semigroups and the Cesàro operator. J. London Math. Soc. (2) 36, 153–164 (1987)Yosida, K.: Functional analysis. Springer, New York, Berlin, Heidelberg (1980)Valdivia, M.: Topics in locally convex spaces. North-Holland Math. Stud. 67, North-Holland, Amsterdam (1982

In-Situ Hydrothermal Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanostructures Using Microheaters

A technique for in-situ hydrothermal synthesis of transversely suspended zinc oxide nanowires (ZnO NWs) using microfabricated heaters is presented. A number of issues relating to seed layer preparation, directed alignment, local heating control and the concentration of the synthesis solution are investigated for this method. It is shown that ZnO NWs can be synthesized and aligned from the ZnO seed surface to bridge two adjacent microheater elements. Moreover, hybrid ZnO nanotubes and nanorods are also synthesized by controlling the concentration of the synthesis solution employed. The crystalline structure of synthesized ZnO nanostructures are characterized by the transmission electron microscope (TEM) and selective area electron diffraction (SAED). Finally, ZnO NW devices based on proposed microheater synthesis approach are characterised for UV photoresponsivity demonstrating the potential of this approach to address practical device applications.Funding support by the WPI-AIMR, Tohoku University and by the Royal Society is gratefully acknowledged.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNANO.2015.246807

F2move: fMRI-compatible haptic object manipulation system for closed-loop motor control studies

Functional neuroimaging plays a key role in addressing open questions in systems and motor neuroscience directly applicable to brain machine interfaces. Building on our low-cost motion capture technology (fMOVE), we developed f2MOVE, an fMRI-compatible system for 6DOF goal-directed hand and wrist movements of human subjects enabling closed-loop sensorimotor haptic experiments with simultaneous neuroimaging. f2MOVE uses a high-zoom lens high frame rate camera and a motion tracking algorithm that tracks in real-time the position of special markers attached to a hand-held object in a novel customized haptic interface. The system operates with high update rate (120 Hz) and sufficiently low time delays (<; 20 ms) to enable visual feedback while complex, goal-oriented movements are recorded. We present here both the accuracy of our motion tracking against a reference signal and the efficacy of the system to evoke motor control specific brain activations in healthy subjects. Our technology and approach thus support the real-time, closed-loop study of the neural foundations of complex haptic motor tasks using neuroimaging

Simulation-based reachability analysis for nonlinear systems using componentwise contraction properties

A shortcoming of existing reachability approaches for nonlinear systems is the poor scalability with the number of continuous state variables. To mitigate this problem we present a simulation-based approach where we first sample a number of trajectories of the system and next establish bounds on the convergence or divergence between the samples and neighboring trajectories. We compute these bounds using contraction theory and reduce the conservatism by partitioning the state vector into several components and analyzing contraction properties separately in each direction. Among other benefits this allows us to analyze the effect of constant but uncertain parameters by treating them as state variables and partitioning them into a separate direction. We next present a numerical procedure to search for weighted norms that yield a prescribed contraction rate, which can be incorporated in the reachability algorithm to adjust the weights to minimize the growth of the reachable set

On the continuous Cesàro operator in certain function spaces

“The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11117-014-0321-5"Various properties of the (continuous) Cesàro operator C, acting on Banach and Fréchet spaces of continuous functions and L p-spaces, are investigated. For instance, the spectrum and point spectrum of C are completely determined and a study of certain dynamics of C is undertaken (eg. hyper- and supercyclicity, chaotic behaviour). In addition, the mean (and uniform mean) ergodic nature of C acting in the various spaces is identified.The research of the first two authors was partially supported by the projects MTM2010-15200 and GVA Prometeo II/2013/013 (Spain). The second author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.Albanese, AA.; Bonet Solves, JA.; Ricker, WJ. (2015). On the continuous Cesàro operator in certain function spaces. Positivity. 19:659-679. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11117-014-0321-5S65967919Albanese, A.A.: Primary products of Banach spaces. Arch. Math. 66, 397–405 (1996)Albanese, A.A.: On subspaces of the spaces $$L^p_{\rm loc}$$ L loc p and of their strong duals. Math. Nachr. 197, 5–18 (1999)Albanese, A.A., Moscatelli, V.B.: Complemented subspaces of sums and products of copies of $$L^1 [0,1]$$ L 1 [ 0 , 1 ] . Rev. Mat. Univ. Complut. Madr. 9, 275–287 (1996)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Mean ergodic operators in Fréchet spaces. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 34, 401–436 (2009)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: On mean ergodic operators. In: Curbera, G.P. (eds.) Vector Measures, Integration and Related Topics. Operator Theory: Advances and Applications, vol. 201, pp. 1–20. Birkhäuser, Basel (2010)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroups and mean ergodic operators in a class of Fréchet spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 365, 142–157 (2010)Albanese, A.A., Bonet, J., Ricker, W.J.: Convergence of arithmetic means of operators in Fréchet spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 401, 160–173 (2013)Bayart, F., Matheron, E.: Dynamics of linear operators. Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, vol. 179. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009)Bellenot, S.F., Dubinsky, E.: Fréchet spaces with nuclear Köthe quotients. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 273, 579–594 (1982)Bonet, J., Frerick, L., Peris, A., Wengenroth, J.: Transitive and hypercyclic operators on locally convex spaces. Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 37, 254–264 (2005)Boyd, D.W.: The spectrum of the Cesàro operator. Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 29, 31–34 (1968)Brown, A., Halmos, P.R., Shields, A.L.: Cesàro operators. Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 26, 125–137 (1965)Dierolf, S., Zarnadze, D.N.: A note on strictly regular Fréchet spaces. Arch. Math. 42, 549–556 (1984)Dunford, N., Schwartz, J.T.: Linear Operators I: General Theory (2nd Printing). Wiley-Interscience, New York (1964)Galaz Fontes, F., Solís, F.J.: Iterating the Cesàro operators. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 136, 2147–2153 (2008)Galaz Fontes, F., Ruiz-Aguilar, R.W.: Grados de ciclicidad de los operadores de Cesàro–Hardy. Misc. Mat. 57, 103–117 (2013)González, M., León-Saavedra, F.: Cyclic behaviour of the Cesàro operator on $$L_2(0,+\infty )$$ L 2 ( 0 , + ∞ ) . Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 137, 2049–2055 (2009)Grosse-Erdmann, K.G., Peris Manguillot, A.: Linear chaos. In: Universitext. Springer, London (2011)Hardy, G.H., Littlewood, J.E., Pólya, G.: Inequalities. In: Reprint of the 1952 Edition. Cambridge Mathematical Library. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988)Krengel, U.: Ergodic theorems. In: De Gruyter Studies in Mathematics, vol. 6. Walter de Gruyter Co., Berlin (1985)Leibowitz, G.M.: Spectra of finite range Cesàro operators. Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 35, 27–28 (1973)Leibowitz, G.M.: The Cesàro operators and their generalizations: examples in infinite-dimensional linear analysis. Am. Math. Mon. 80, 654–661 (1973)León-Saavedra, F., Piqueras-Lerena, A., Seoane-Sepúlveda, J.B.: Orbits of Cesàro type operators. Math. Nachr. 282, 764–773 (2009)Lin, M.: On the uniform ergodic theorem. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 43, 337–340 (1974)Meise, R., Vogt, D.: Introduction to functional analysis. In: Oxford Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 2. The Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, New York (1997)Metafune, G., Moscatelli, V.B.: Quojections and prequojections. In: Terzioğlu, T. (ed.) Advances in the Theory of Fréchet spaces. NATO ASI Series, vol. 287, pp. 235–254. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1989)Moscatelli, V.B.: Fréchet spaces without norms and without bases. Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 12, 63–66 (1980)Piszczek, K.: Quasi-reflexive Fréchet spaces and mean ergodicity. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 361, 224–233 (2010)Piszczek, K.: Barrelled spaces and mean ergodicity. Rev R. Acad. Cienc. Exactas Fis. Nat. Ser. A Math. RACSAM 104, 5–11 (2010)Yosida, K.: Functional Analysis, 6th edn. Springer, Berlin (1980

Applying the selective Cu electroplating technique to light-emitting diodes

[[abstract]]We successfully fabricated a predefined patterned copper (Cu) substrate for thin GaN light-emitting diodes without barriers by the selective electroplating technique. The contours of Cu bumps fabricated using different electroplating modes and parameters were measured. We observed that the average thickness diminished with increasing current density. The current density conditions to obtain the best upright structure in the process were 40 and 80 mA/cm2.[[notice]]補正完畢[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙本[[booktype]]電子

Single-Atom Gating of Quantum State Superpositions

The ultimate miniaturization of electronic devices will likely require local and coherent control of single electronic wavefunctions. Wavefunctions exist within both physical real space and an abstract state space with a simple geometric interpretation: this state space--or Hilbert space--is spanned by mutually orthogonal state vectors corresponding to the quantized degrees of freedom of the real-space system. Measurement of superpositions is akin to accessing the direction of a vector in Hilbert space, determining an angle of rotation equivalent to quantum phase. Here we show that an individual atom inside a designed quantum corral can control this angle, producing arbitrary coherent superpositions of spatial quantum states. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy and nanostructures assembled atom-by-atom we demonstrate how single spins and quantum mirages can be harnessed to image the superposition of two electronic states. We also present a straightforward method to determine the atom path enacting phase rotations between any desired state vectors. A single atom thus becomes a real space handle for an abstract Hilbert space, providing a simple technique for coherent quantum state manipulation at the spatial limit of condensed matter.Comment: Published online 6 April 2008 in Nature Physics; 17 page manuscript (including 4 figures) + 3 page supplement (including 2 figures); supplementary movies available at http://mota.stanford.ed

Emergence of non-centrosymmetric topological insulating phase in BiTeI under pressure

The spin-orbit interaction affects the electronic structure of solids in various ways. Topological insulators are one example where the spin-orbit interaction leads the bulk bands to have a non-trivial topology, observable as gapless surface or edge states. Another example is the Rashba effect, which lifts the electron-spin degeneracy as a consequence of spin-orbit interaction under broken inversion symmetry. It is of particular importance to know how these two effects, i.e. the non-trivial topology of electronic states and Rashba spin splitting, interplay with each other. Here we show, through sophisticated first-principles calculations, that BiTeI, a giant bulk Rashba semiconductor, turns into a topological insulator under a reasonable pressure. This material is shown to exhibit several unique features such as, a highly pressure-tunable giant Rashba spin splitting, an unusual pressure-induced quantum phase transition, and more importantly the formation of strikingly different Dirac surface states at opposite sides of the material.Comment: 5 figures are include