An Enhanced DC-Bus Voltage-Control Loop for Single-Phase Grid-Connected DC/AC Converters

© 1986-2012 IEEE. This paper presents a method to enhance the dc-bus voltage-control loop of a single-phase grid-connected dc/ac converter, which improves its responses in terms of oscillation on its dc-bus voltage as well as its output ac current. Conventionally, the double-frequency (2-f) ripple is reduced by using a large electrolyte capacitor, which increases the cost and size of the system. A state-of-the-art approach is to use a notch filter (NF) to block the 2-f ripple in the voltage-control loop. This can significantly reduce the capacitor size. The existing presentations of this method, however, do not integrate the internal dynamics of the NF into consideration. This paper proposes a new way of implementing the NF, which allows integration of its internal variables into the control loop. The resulted system exhibits enhanced transient responses at both the dc-bus voltage and the output ac current. The proposed method is analyzed in detail and its effectiveness is verified through simulations and experimental results

An enhanced control system for single-phase inverters interfaced with weak and distorted grids

© 2019 IEEE. This paper presents an enhanced current controller for improving the performance of a class of single-phase grid-connected inverters operating in weak and distorted grid conditions. An inverter designed to operate at normal (strong or stiff and clean) grid conditions may not perform satisfactorily during weak and distorted grid conditions. One major reason is the interfering dynamics of the synchronization or phase-locked loop (PLL). This paper proposes an enhanced control structure for a popular class of single-phase inverters to address this problem. The proposed idea is to include the PLL state variables into the main inverter controller thereby minimizing the undesirable interactions of the PLL with the other components. A method for optimally designing the controller gains is also proposed. Compared to the conventional one, the proposed controller is shown to have a more robust performance over a substantially wider range of weak and distorted grid conditions. Extensive simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed controls

Spin-orbit hybrid entanglement of photons and quantum contextuality

We demonstrate electromagnetic quantum states of single photons and of correlated photon pairs exhibiting "hybrid" entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum. These states are obtained from entangled photon pairs emitted by spontaneous parametric down conversion, by employing a $q$-plate for coupling the spin and orbital degrees of freedom of a photon. Entanglement and contextual quantum behavior (that is also non-local, in the case of photon pairs) is demonstrated by the reported violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality. In addition a classical analog of the hybrid spin-orbit photonic entanglement is reported and discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Eighteen Months of Meeple Like Us:An Exploration into the State of Board Game Accessibility

The study of game accessibility to date has largely focused on the topic of accessibility within a video game context. Largely underexplored in the academic and professional literature is accessibility in the domain of tabletop games, especially those that are classified as part of the 'hobbyist' market. An ongoing series of research annotations, published on the blog Meeple Like Us, has been aimed at addressing this lack of attention. In this paper, the authors report on the work of the Meeple Centred Design project which to date has examined 116 board games for the accessibility issues they manifest and the lessons that can be learned for designers in this space. While the project has not achieved significant coverage of even a fraction of the available library of hobbyist games, currently numbering approximately one hundred thousand, it has discussed the issues with many of the most critically success and popular of these titles. This paper reports on results to date, methodology of the analyses, limitations of the project, and the future plans for work in this interesting game accessibility context

Optimal quantum cloning of orbital angular momentum photon qubits via Hong-Ou-Mandel coalescence

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light, associated with a helical structure of the wavefunction, has a great potential for quantum photonics, as it allows attaching a higher dimensional quantum space to each photon. Hitherto, however, the use of OAM has been hindered by its difficult manipulation. Here, exploiting the recently demonstrated spin-OAM information transfer tools, we report the first observation of the Hong-Ou-Mandel coalescence of two incoming photons having nonzero OAM into the same outgoing mode of a beam-splitter. The coalescence can be switched on and off by varying the input OAM state of the photons. Such effect has been then exploited to carry out the 1 \rightarrow 2 universal optimal quantum cloning of OAM-encoded qubits, using the symmetrization technique already developed for polarization. These results are finally shown to be scalable to quantum spaces of arbitrary dimension, even combining different degrees of freedom of the photons.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

No Differential Regulation of Dopamine Transporter (DAT) and Vesicular Monoamine Transporter 2 (VMAT2) Binding in a Primate Model of Parkinson Disease

Radioligands for DAT and VMAT2 are widely used presynaptic markers for assessing dopamine (DA) nerve terminals in Parkinson disease (PD). Previous in vivo imaging and postmortem studies suggest that these transporter sites may be regulated as the numbers of nigrostriatal neurons change in pathologic conditions. To investigate this issue, we used in vitro quantitative autoradioradiography to measure striatal DAT and VMAT2 specific binding in postmortem brain from 14 monkeys after unilateral internal carotid artery infusion of 1-Methyl-4-Phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) with doses varying from 0 to 0.31 mg/kg. Quantitative estimates of the number of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-immunoreactive (ir) neurons in substantia nigra (SN) were determined with unbiased stereology, and quantitative autoradiography was used to measure DAT and VMAT2 striatal specific binding. Striatal VMAT2 and DAT binding correlated with striatal DA (rs = 0.83, rs = 0.80, respectively, both with n = 14, p<0.001) but only with nigra TH-ir cells when nigral cell loss was 50% or less (r = 0.93, n = 8, p = 0.001 and r = 0.91, n = 8, p = 0.002 respectively). Reduction of VMAT2 and DAT striatal specific binding sites strongly correlated with each other (r = 0.93, n = 14, p<0.0005). These similar changes in DAT and VMAT2 binding sites in the striatal terminal fields of the surviving nigrostriatal neurons demonstrate that there is no differential regulation of these two sites at 2 months after MPTP infusion

Coronary artery bypass surgery in a patient with Kartagener syndrome: a case report and literature review

Kartagener syndrome consists of congenital bronchiectasis, sinusitis, and total situs inversus in half of the patients. A patient diagnosed with Kartagener syndrome was reffered to our department due to 3-vessel coronary disease. An off-pump coronary artery bypass operation was performed using both internal thoracic arteries and a saphenous vein graft. We performed a literature review for cases with Kartagener syndrome, coronary surgery and dextrocardia. Although a few cases of dextrocardia were found in the literature, no case of Kartagener syndrome was mentioned

Human Neural Stem Cells Differentiate and Promote Locomotor Recovery in an Early Chronic Spinal coRd Injury NOD-scid Mouse Model

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) results in partial or complete paralysis and is characterized by a loss of neurons and oligodendrocytes, axonal injury, and demyelination/dysmyelination of spared axons. Approximately 1,250,000 individuals have chronic SCI in the U.S.; therefore treatment in the chronic stages is highly clinically relevant. Human neural stem cells (hCNS-SCns) were prospectively isolated based on fluorescence-activated cell sorting for a CD133(+) and CD24(-/lo) population from fetal brain, grown as neurospheres, and lineage restricted to generate neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. hCNS-SCns have recently been transplanted sub-acutely following spinal cord injury and found to promote improved locomotor recovery. We tested the ability of hCNS-SCns transplanted 30 days post SCI to survive, differentiate, migrate, and promote improved locomotor recovery.hCNS-SCns were transplanted into immunodeficient NOD-scid mice 30 days post spinal cord contusion injury. hCNS-SCns transplanted mice demonstrated significantly improved locomotor recovery compared to vehicle controls using open field locomotor testing and CatWalk gait analysis. Transplanted hCNS-SCns exhibited long-term engraftment, migration, limited proliferation, and differentiation predominantly to oligodendrocytes and neurons. Astrocytic differentiation was rare and mice did not exhibit mechanical allodynia. Furthermore, differentiated hCNS-SCns integrated with the host as demonstrated by co-localization of human cytoplasm with discrete staining for the paranodal marker contactin-associated protein.The results suggest that hCNS-SCns are capable of surviving, differentiating, and promoting improved locomotor recovery when transplanted into an early chronic injury microenvironment. These data suggest that hCNS-SCns transplantation has efficacy in an early chronic SCI setting and thus expands the "window of opportunity" for intervention