Pragmatic Trellis Coded Modulation: A Simulation Using 24-Sector Quantized 8-PSK

Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM)[2,3,4], combines convolutional encoding with PSK or QAM signalling to provide spectrally efficient communication with forward error correction. Pragmatic TCM[1], uses the industry standard, 64-state, binary convolutional code. This paper presents a simulation of a pragmatic TCM system for 8-PSK. This system associates each sector of a quantized phase receiver[9] with a pair of weights to be used as soft decision inputs of the Viterbi decoder. This system approaches 3dB of coding gain at bit error rates of 10-5 and less

Fast TCM Decoding: Phase Quantization and Integer Weighting

TCM, combining modulation and coding, achieves coding gains over conventional uncoded multilevel modulation without the attendant bandwidth expansion. Since TCM was proposed Ungerboeck (1982, 1987) substantial work has done in this area. A large portion of the TCM work has been in the area of high-speed data transmission over voice grade modems using quadrature amplitude modulation, QAM. QAM, not having a constant envelope, is unattractive for employing a TWT with its nonlinear behavior as the power stage. Additional work has been done in utilizing M-ary PSK with TCM. Simulations by Taylor and Chan (1981) utilizing a 4-state convolutional code demonstrated the coding gain of a rate 2/3 coded 8-PSK modulation scheme. Wilson et. al. (1984) obtained results for 16-PSK TCM using codes with 4 to 32 states and achieved coding gains of 3.5 to 4.8 dB respectively, over 8-PSK and demonstrated that small memory codes achieved good gains with simple design procedures

Pragmatic Trellis Coded Modulation: A Hardware Implementation Using 24-sector 8-PSK

Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM)[2,3], combines convolutional encoding with PSK or QAM signalling to provide spectrally efficient communication with forward error correction. Pragmatic TCM[4], uses the industry standard, 64-state, binary convolutional code. This paper presents a hardware implementation of a pragmatic TCM system for 8-PSK. This system associates each sector of a quantized phase receiver[7] with a pair of weights to be used as soft decision inputs of the Viterbi decoder. This system approaches 3dB of coding gain at bit error rates of 10-5 and less

Evaluation of a liquid chromatographic method for the determination of fumonisins in corn, poultry feed, and Fusarium culture material.

The performance of a liquid chromatographic method for determining fumonisins in corn, animal feeds, and culture material was evaluated. Efficiencies of extractions with the following solvent systems were determined: acetonitrile-water (50 + 50, v/v), methanol-water (75 + 25, v/v), and 100% water. The acetonitrile solvent gave both higher extraction efficiencies and faster extraction times than the other 2 solvents. Extraction was followed by C18 solid-phase extraction column cleanup. Fumonisin B1 (FB1), fumonisin B2 (FB2), and fumonisin B3 (FB3) were measured by precolumn derivatization with o-phthalaldehyde followed by isocratic separation on a C18 reversed-phase column with a mobile phase of 50 mM potassium dihydrogen phosphate (pH 3.3)-acetonitrile (60 + 40). Commercially prepared poultry feed, corn, and Fusarium spp. corn cultures were analyzed at the following levels: FB1, 1.5 to 15,000 micrograms/g; FB2, 0.5 to 4000 micrograms/g; FB3, and 0.17 to 1,500 micrograms/g. Recoveries were 91-94%, 90-100%, and 81-93% for FB1, FB2, and FB3, respectively. Precision (coefficient of variation) was determined with pooled field samples and ranged from 2% at 19 micrograms/g for FB1 to 9% at 0.17 microgram/g for FB3. Time and pH studies of the formation of the fluorescent derivative and its stability were conducted. Complete reaction occurred at pHs above 7.9, with optimal pH for chromatography between 8.0 and 8.5. No statistically significant response differences were detected for reaction times ranging from 4 to 40 min; however, the detector signal was significantly reduced when reaction times were shorter than 4 min. Chromatograms of samples were free of interferences for all feeds, corn, and culture material teste

Fire, Hurricane and Carbon Dioxide: Effects on Net Primary Production of a Subtropical Woodland

Disturbance affects most terrestrial ecosystems and has the potential to shape their responses to chronic environmental change. Scrub-oak vegetation regenerating from fire disturbance in subtropical Florida was exposed to experimentally elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration (+350ll-1) using open-top chambers for 11yr, punctuated by hurricane disturbance in year 8. Here, we report the effects of elevated CO2 on aboveground and belowground net primary productivity (NPP) and nitrogen (N) cycling during this experiment. The stimulation of NPP and N uptake by elevated CO2 peaked within 2yr after disturbance by fire and hurricane, when soil nutrient availability was high. The stimulation subsequently declined and disappeared, coincident with low soil nutrient availability and with a CO2-induced reduction in the N concentration of oak stems. These findings show that strong growth responses to elevated CO2 can be transient, are consistent with a progressively limited response to elevated CO2 interrupted by disturbance, and illustrate the importance of biogeochemical responses to extreme events in modulating ecosystem responses to global environmental change

Experimental Confirmation of Quantum Monodromy: The Millimeter Wave Spectrum of Cyanogen Isothiocyanate NCNCS

We have made energy-momentum maps for the experimental end-over-end rotational energy and the two-dimensional bending vibrational energy, both of which confirm the dominating effects of nontrivial quantum monodromy in cyanogen isothiocyanate. Accidental resonances in the rotational spectra yield accurate intervals between bending states

Probing the Circumgalactic Medium at High-Redshift Using Composite BOSS Spectra of Strong Lyman-alpha Forest Absorbers

We present composite spectra constructed from a sample of 242,150 Lyman-alpha (Lya) forest absorbers at redshifts 2.4<z<3.1 identified in quasar spectra from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) as part of Data Release 9 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. We select forest absorbers by their flux in bins 138 km/s wide (approximately the size of the BOSS resolution element). We split these absorbers into five samples spanning the range of flux -0.05 < F<0.45. Tests on a smaller sample of high-resolution spectra show that our three strongest absorption bins would probe circumgalactic regions (projected separation < 300 proper kpc and |Delta v| < 300km/s) in about 60% of cases for very high signal-to-noise ratio. Within this subset, weakening Lya absorption is associated with decreasing purity of circumgalactic selection once BOSS noise is included. Our weaker two Lya absorption samples are dominated by the intergalactic medium. We present composite spectra of these samples and a catalogue of measured absorption features from HI and 13 metal ionization species, all of which we make available to the community. We compare measurements of seven Lyman series transitions in our composite spectra to single line models and obtain further constraints from their associated excess Lyman limit opacity. This analysis provides results consistent with column densities over the range 14.4 <~ Log (N_HI) <~ 16.45. We compare our measurements of metal absorption to a variety of simple single-line, single-phase models for a preliminary interpretation. Our results imply clumping on scales down to ~30 pc and near-solar metallicities in the circumgalactic samples, while high-ionization metal absorption consistent with typical IGM densities and metallicities is visible in all samples.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, link to downloadable data included. Accepted by MNRAS 2014 March 20. New sections 3.4 and 6.1 limiting the occurrence and impact of Lyman limit system

No evidence for an intragenomic arms race under paternal genome elimination in <i>Planococcus</i> mealybugs

Genomic conflicts arising during reproduction might play an important role in shaping the striking diversity of reproductive strategies across life. Among these is paternal genome elimination (PGE), a form of haplodiploidy which has independently evolved several times in arthropods. PGE males are diploid but transmit maternally inherited chromosomes only, whereas paternal homologues are excluded from sperm. Mothers thereby effectively monopolize the parentage of sons, at the cost of the father's reproductive success. This creates striking conflict between the sexes that could result in a co-evolutionary arms race between paternal and maternal genomes over gene transmission, yet empirical evidence that such an arms race indeed takes place under PGE is scarce. This study addresses this by testing whether PGE is complete when paternal genotypes are exposed to divergent maternal backgrounds in intraspecific and hybrid crosses of the citrus mealybug, Planococcus citri, and the closely related Planococcus ficus. We determined whether males can transmit genetic information through their sons by tracking inheritance of two traits in a three-generation pedigree: microsatellite markers and sex-specific pheromone preferences. Our results suggest leakages of single paternal chromosomes through males occurring at a low frequency, but we find no evidence for transmission of paternal pheromone preferences from fathers to sons. The absence of differences between hybrid and intraspecific crosses in leakage rate of paternal alleles suggests that a co-evolutionary arms race cannot be demonstrated on this evolutionary timescale, but we conclude that there is scope for intragenomic conflict between parental genomes in mealybugs. Finally, we discuss how these paternal escapes can occur and what these findings may reveal about the evolutionary dynamics of this bizarre genetic system

Bounds on R-Parity Violating Parameters from Fermion EDM's

We study one-loop contributions to the fermion electric dipole moments in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with explicit R-parity violating interactions. We obtain new individual bounds on R-parity violating Yukawa couplings and put more stringent limits on certain parameters than those obtained previously.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe