Spatial Mechanism Design in Virtual Reality With Networking

Mechanisms are used in many devices to move a rigid body through a finite sequence of prescribed locations. The most commonly used mechanisms are four-bar planar mechanisms that move an object in one plane in space. Spatial mechanisms allow motion in three-dimensions (3D), however, to date they are rarely implemented in industry in great part due to the inherent visualization and design challenges involved. Nevertheless, they do provide promise as a practical solution to spatial motion generation and therefore remain an active area of research. Spatial 4C mechanisms are two degree-of-freedom kinematic closed-chains consisting of four rigid links simply connected in series by cylindrical (C) joints. A cylindrical joint is a two degree-of-freedom joint, which allows translation and rotation about a line in space. This paper describes a synthesis process for the design of 4C spatial mechanisms in a virtual environment. Virtual reality allows the user to view and interact with digital models in a more intuitive way than using the traditional human-computer interface (HCI). The software developed as part of this research also allows multiple users to network and share the designed mechanism. Networking tools have the potential to greatly enhance communication between members of the design team at different industrial sites and therefore reduce design costs. This software presents the first effort to provide a three-dimensional digital design environment for the design of spatial 4C mechanisms

A Quasi-Classical Model of Intermediate Velocity Particle Production in Asymmetric Heavy Ion Reactions

The particle emission at intermediate velocities in mass asymmetric reactions is studied within the framework of classical molecular dynamics. Two reactions in the Fermi energy domain were modelized, $^{58}$Ni+C and $^{58}$Ni+Au at 34.5 MeV/nucleon. The availability of microscopic correlations at all times allowed a detailed study of the fragment formation process. Special attention was paid to the physical origin of fragments and emission timescales, which allowed us to disentangle the different processes involved in the mid-rapidity particle production. Consequently, a clear distinction between a prompt pre- equilibrium emission and a delayed aligned asymmetric breakup of the heavier partner of the reaction was achieved.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Final version: figures were redesigned, and a new section discussing the role of Coulomb in IMF production was include

Source size scaling of fragment production in projectile breakup

Fragment production has been studied as a function of the source mass and excitation energy in peripheral collisions of $^{35}$Cl+$^{197}$Au at 43 MeV/nucleon and $^{70}$Ge+$^{nat}$Ti at 35 MeV/nucleon. The results are compared to the Au+Au data at 600 MeV/nucleon obtained by the ALADIN collaboration. A mass scaling, by $A_{source} \sim$ 35 to 190, strongly correlated to excitation energy per nucleon, is presented, suggesting a thermal fragment production mechanism. Comparisons to a standard sequential decay model and the lattice-gas model are made. Fragment emission from a hot, rotating source is unable to reproduce the experimental source size scaling.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX file, including 3 postscript figures (in .tar.gz fornmat), accepted in Phys. Rev. C . Also available at http://thomson.phy.ulaval.ca/ions_lourds/gil-en.htm

ISLES 2015 - A public evaluation benchmark for ischemic stroke lesion segmentation from multispectral MRI

Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).Peer reviewe

The Euchromatic and Heterochromatic Landscapes Are Shaped by Antagonizing Effects of Transcription on H2A.Z Deposition

A role for variant histone H2A.Z in gene expression is now well established but little is known about the mechanisms by which it operates. Using a combination of ChIP–chip, knockdown and expression profiling experiments, we show that upon gene induction, human H2A.Z associates with gene promoters and helps in recruiting the transcriptional machinery. Surprisingly, we also found that H2A.Z is randomly incorporated in the genome at low levels and that active transcription antagonizes this incorporation in transcribed regions. After cessation of transcription, random H2A.Z quickly reappears on genes, demonstrating that this incorporation utilizes an active mechanism. Within facultative heterochromatin, we observe a hyper accumulation of the variant histone, which might be due to the lack of transcription in these regions. These results show how chromatin structure and transcription can antagonize each other, therefore shaping chromatin and controlling gene expression

A Distance Metric for Finite Sets of Rigid-Body Displacements via the Polar Decomposition

An open research question is how to define a useful metric on the special Euclidean group SE(n) with respect to: (1) the choice of coordinate frames and (2) the units used to measure linear and angular distances that is useful for the synthesis and analysis of mechanical systems. We discuss a technique for approximating elements of SE(n) with elements of the special orthogonal group SO(n+ 1). This technique is based on using the singular value decomposition (SVD) and the polar decompositions (PD) of the homogeneous transform representation of the elements of SE(n). The embedding of the elements of SE(n) into SO (n+ 1) yields hyperdimensional rotations that approximate the rigid-body displacements. The bi-invariant metric on SO (n+ 1) is then used to measure the distance between any two displacements. The result is a left invariant PD based metric on SE(n)