Multiple-Resampling Receiver Design for OFDM Over Doppler-Distorted Underwater Acoustic Channels

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In this paper, we focus on orthogonal frequency-divisionmultiplexing (OFDM) receiver designs for underwater acoustic (UWA) channels with user- and/or path-specific Doppler scaling distortions. The scenario is motivated by the cooperative communications framework, where distributed transmitter/receiver pairs may experience significantly different Doppler distortions, as well as by the single-user scenarios, where distinct Doppler scaling factors may exist among different propagation paths. The conventional approach of front–end resampling that corrects for common Doppler scalingmay not be appropriatein such scenarios, rendering a post-fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) signal that is contaminated by user- and/or path-specific intercarrier interference. To counteract this problem, we propose a family of front–end receiver structures thatutilizemultiple-resampling (MR)branches,eachmatched to the Doppler scaling factor of a particular user and/or path. Following resampling, FFT modules transform the Doppler-compensated signals into the frequency domain for further processing through linear or nonlinear detection schemes. As part of the overall receiver structure, a gradient–descent approachis also proposed to refine the channel estimates obtained by standard sparse channel estimators. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed receivers are demonstrated via simulations, as well as emulations based on real data collected during the 2010 Mobile Acoustic Communications Experiment (MACE10, Martha’s Vineyard, MA) and the 2008 Kauai Acomms MURI (KAM08, Kauai, HI) experiment

Morphological Characteristics of Breast and Thigh Muscles of Autochthonous Breeds of Chickens

Morphological characteristics of skeletal muscles of autochthonous breeds of chickens are very important for meat quality and comparison with current hybrids for intensive production. The autochthonous breeds used in the experiment were Sombor crested and Banat naked neck, both sexes. For the purposes of morphological examination, tissue samples were taken from the thigh muscle (m. biceps femoris) and muscles of the breast (m. pectoralis profundus) of 5 male and female animals of each breed. After a standard histological procedure for conventional light microscopy, samples were stained with hematoxylin - eosin. After the processing of the samples for the histochemical analysis, samples were stained with the enzyme succinate - dehydrogenase (SDH) with the aim of determining the presence of different muscle cell types (red, white and intermediate). Morphological parameters, in this study, were diameter of muscle cells, nucleocytoplasmic ratio of muscle cells, volume density of connective tissue within the muscle and the presence of red, white and intermediate muscle cell types. Comparison of diameters of muscle cells thigh and breast muscles between Sombor crested and Banat naked neck have showed that kind of muscle, race or gender have no significant effect on the differences in this parameter. There were no statistically significant differences in the nucleo-cytoplasmic ratio of the volume density of the connective tissue of muscles. Red muscle cells were, in both autochthonous breeds, significantly more represented in m. biceps femoris than m. pectoralis profundus. The results of this study indicate that no differences were observed between autochthonous breeds in morphological parameters for examined breast and thigh muscle

Entanglement dynamics of two qubits under the influence of external kicks and Gaussian pulses

We have investigated the dynamics of entanglement between two spin-1/2 qubits that are subject to independent kick and Gaussian pulse type external magnetic fields analytically as well as numerically. Dyson time ordering effect on the dynamics is found to be important for the sequence of kicks. We show that "almost-steady" high entanglement can be created between two initially unentangled qubits by using carefully designed kick or pulse sequences

Cellular automaton supercolliders

Gliders in one-dimensional cellular automata are compact groups of non-quiescent and non-ether patterns (ether represents a periodic background) translating along automaton lattice. They are cellular-automaton analogous of localizations or quasi-local collective excitations travelling in a spatially extended non-linear medium. They can be considered as binary strings or symbols travelling along a one-dimensional ring, interacting with each other and changing their states, or symbolic values, as a result of interactions. We analyse what types of interaction occur between gliders travelling on a cellular automaton `cyclotron' and build a catalog of the most common reactions. We demonstrate that collisions between gliders emulate the basic types of interaction that occur between localizations in non-linear media: fusion, elastic collision, and soliton-like collision. Computational outcomes of a swarm of gliders circling on a one-dimensional torus are analysed via implementation of cyclic tag systems

Clar Sextet Analysis of Triangular, Rectangular and Honeycomb Graphene Antidot Lattices

Pristine graphene is a semimetal and thus does not have a band gap. By making a nanometer scale periodic array of holes in the graphene sheet a band gap may form; the size of the gap is controllable by adjusting the parameters of the lattice. The hole diameter, hole geometry, lattice geometry and the separation of the holes are parameters that all play an important role in determining the size of the band gap, which, for technological applications, should be at least of the order of tenths of an eV. We investigate four different hole configurations: the rectangular, the triangular, the rotated triangular and the honeycomb lattice. It is found that the lattice geometry plays a crucial role for size of the band gap: the triangular arrangement displays always a sizable gap, while for the other types only particular hole separations lead to a large gap. This observation is explained using Clar sextet theory, and we find that a sufficient condition for a large gap is that the number of sextets exceeds one third of the total number of hexagons in the unit cell. Furthermore, we investigate non-isosceles triangular structures to probe the sensitivity of the gap in triangular lattices to small changes in geometry

Immunoblastic morphology as a possible prognostic indicator for the outcome of the patients with diffuse large B cell lymphoma in era of the rituximab based treatment: single centre experience

Recently the results from one large prospective study indicated that immunoblastic morphology and not immunohistohemical features predict the outcome of the Diffuse large B lymphoma (DLBL). In order to investigate the prediction value of the immunoblastic morphology (IB) as a possible prognostic indicator for the outcome of our DLBL patient treated with the Rituximab (R)-CHOP regimen we conducted a retrospective study. Our study enrolled 192 DLBL patients diagnosed and treated at the University Clinic of Hematology in the period between February 2002 and December 2007. They were all treated with R-CHOP regimen and the median follow-up of the patient was 36 months. We analyzed the biopsy samples immunohistochemically for markers of germinal center (BCL6), post-germinal center (MUM1) and apoptosis (BCL2).The patients were categorized as DLBL(132; 68.7%), IB(60; 31.2). The median overall survival time (OS) were 59.3 months in DLBL group and 42.2 months in IB group, and time to treatment (TT) were 56.8 and 30.6 months respectively for the IB group. The DLBL and IB groups were comparable regarding the age, gender distributions and all others already established prognostic parameters as performance status, advanced IPI, albumin level except for the low IPI 0-2 which was statistically associated with the DLBL group (p=.024). Our results did not show any statistical survival advantage and better outcome for the patient classified as DLBL when treated with R-CHOP and indicate that immunohistohemical markers do not really reflect the molecular diversity of the tumor.  Our work shows that IB morphology is a major risk factor in DLBL patients treated with R-CHOP. Therefore this morphology appears to capture some adverse molecular events that a currently hard to detect with routine diagnostic procedures.

A study of the distribution of phylogenetically conserved blocks within clusters of mammalian homeobox genes

Genome sequencing efforts of the last decade have produced a large amount of data, which has enabled whole-genome comparative analyses in order to locate potentially functional elements and study the overall patterns of phylogenetic conservation. In this paper we present a statistically based method for the characterization of these patterns in mammalian DNA sequences. We have applied this approach to the study of exceptionally well conserved homeobox gene clusters (Hox), based on an alignment of six species, and we have constructed a map of Hox cataloguing the conserved fragments, along with their locations in relation to the genes and other landmarks, sometimes showing unexpected layouts

Therapeutic applications of curcumin nanomedicine formulations in cardiovascular diseases

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) compromises a group of heart and blood vessels disorders with high impact on human health and wellbeing. Curcumin (CUR) have demonstrated beneficial effects on these group of diseases that represent a global burden with a prevalence that continues increasing progressively. Pre- and clinical studies have demonstrated the CUR effects in CVD through its anti-hypercholesterolemic and anti-atherosclerotic effects and its protective properties against cardiac ischemia and reperfusion. However, the CUR therapeutic limitation is its bioavailability. New CUR nanomedicine formulations are developed to solve this problem. The present article aims to discuss different studies and approaches looking into the promising role of nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems to deliver CUR and its derivatives in CVD treatment, with an emphasis on their formulation properties, experimental evidence, bioactivity, as well as challenges and opportunities in developing these systems.This work was supported by CONICYT PIA/APOYO CCTE AFB170007. N. Martins would like to thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT–Portugal) for the Strategic project ref. UID/BIM/04293/2013 and “NORTE2020—Programa Operacional Regional do Norte” (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000012)

The effectiveness of resistance genes derived from Aegilops spp. to wheat rusts

In this paper resistance of nearly isogenic lines with genes Sr32, Sr33, Lr9, Lr21 and Lr22 derived from Ae. squarrosa and Ae. umbellulata is presented. The genes Sr32 and Sr33 showed good effectiveness to different pathotypes of wheat stem rust in seedling stage. But, in adult stage lines with this genes were moderately resistant to very susceptible in Kragujevac and Zajeear. The most effective was gene Lr9. In our population of wheat leaf rust there is no alleles of virulence to this gene. The lines with other two genes (Lr21 and Lr22) were susceptible in Novi Sad and moderately susceptible in Kragujevac. Studies showed that Aegilops spp. is very important source of Sr and Lr genes of resistance