Compressive Sensing Based Channel Feedback Protocols for Spatially-Correlated Massive Antenna Arrays

Incorporating wireless transceivers with numerous antennas (such as Massive-MIMO) is a prospective way to increase the link capacity or enhance the energy efficiency of future communication systems. However, the benefits of such approach can be realized only when proper channel information is available at the transmitter. Since the amount of the channel information required by the transmitter is large with so many antennas, the feedback is arduous in practice, especially for frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. This paper proposes channel feedback reduction techniques based on the theory of compressive sensing, which permits the transmitter to obtain channel information with acceptable accuracy under substantially reduced feedback load. Furthermore, by leveraging properties of compressive sensing, we present two adaptive feedback protocols, in which the feedback content can be dynamically configured based on channel conditions to improve the efficiency.Engineering and Applied Science

Exploratory spatial data analysis for the identification of risk factors to birth defects

BACKGROUND: Birth defects, which are the major cause of infant mortality and a leading cause of disability, refer to "Any anomaly, functional or structural, that presents in infancy or later in life and is caused by events preceding birth, whether inherited, or acquired (ICBDMS)". However, the risk factors associated with heredity and/or environment are very difficult to filter out accurately. This study selected an area with the highest ratio of neural-tube birth defect (NTBD) occurrences worldwide to identify the scale of environmental risk factors for birth defects using exploratory spatial data analysis methods. METHODS: By birth defect registers based on hospital records and investigation in villages, the number of birth defects cases within a four-year period was acquired and classified by organ system. The neural-tube birth defect ratio was calculated according to the number of births planned for each village in the study area, as the family planning policy is strictly adhered to in China. The Bayesian modeling method was used to estimate the ratio in order to remove the dependence of variance caused by different populations in each village. A recently developed statistical spatial method for detecting hotspots, Getis's [Image: see text] [7], was used to detect the high-risk regions for neural-tube birth defects in the study area. RESULTS: After the Bayesian modeling method was used to calculate the ratio of neural-tube birth defects occurrences, Getis's [Image: see text] statistics method was used in different distance scales. Two typical clustering phenomena were present in the study area. One was related to socioeconomic activities, and the other was related to soil type distributions. CONCLUSION: The fact that there were two typical hotspot clustering phenomena provides evidence that the risk for neural-tube birth defect exists on two different scales (a socioeconomic scale at 6.84 km and a soil type scale at 22.8 km) for the area studied. Although our study has limited spatial exploratory data for the analysis of the neural-tube birth defect occurrence ratio and for finding clues to risk factors, this result provides effective clues for further physical, chemical and even more molecular laboratory testing according to these two spatial scales

Structure-function study of maize ribosome-inactivating protein: implications for the internal inactivation region and the sole glutamate in the active site

Maize ribosome-inactivating protein is classified as a class III or an atypical RNA N-glycosidase. It is synthesized as an inactive precursor with a 25-amino acid internal inactivation region, which is removed in the active form. As the first structural example of this class of proteins, crystals of the precursor and the active form were diffracted to 2.4 and 2.5 Å, respectively. The two proteins are similar, with main chain root mean square deviation (RMSD) of 0.519. In the precursor, the inactivation region is found on the protein surface and consists of a flexible loop followed by a long α-helix. This region diminished both the interaction with ribosome and cytotoxicity, but not cellular uptake. Like bacterial ribosome-inactivating proteins, maize ribosome-inactivating protein does not have a back-up glutamate in the active site, which helps the protein to retain some activity if the catalytic glutamate is mutated. The structure reveals that the active site is too small to accommodate two glutamate residues. Our structure suggests that maize ribosome-inactivating protein may represent an intermediate product in the evolution of ribosome-inactivating proteins. © 2007 The Author(s).published_or_final_versio

Graphene-Based Nanocomposites for Energy Storage

Since the first report of using micromechanical cleavage method to produce graphene sheets in 2004, graphene/graphene-based nanocomposites have attracted wide attention both for fundamental aspects as well as applications in advanced energy storage and conversion systems. In comparison to other materials, graphene-based nanostructured materials have unique 2D structure, high electronic mobility, exceptional electronic and thermal conductivities, excellent optical transmittance, good mechanical strength, and ultrahigh surface area. Therefore, they are considered as attractive materials for hydrogen (H2) storage and high-performance electrochemical energy storage devices, such as supercapacitors, rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries, Li–sulfur batteries, Li–air batteries, sodium (Na)-ion batteries, Na–air batteries, zinc (Zn)–air batteries, and vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), etc., as they can improve the efficiency, capacity, gravimetric energy/power densities, and cycle life of these energy storage devices. In this article, recent progress reported on the synthesis and fabrication of graphene nanocomposite materials for applications in these aforementioned various energy storage systems is reviewed. Importantly, the prospects and future challenges in both scalable manufacturing and more energy storage-related applications are discussed

Study of the ZZ\gamma and Z\gamma\gamma Couplings in Z(\nu\nu)\gamma Production

We have measured the ZZ-gamma and Z-gamma-gamma couplings by studying p-bar p -> (missing ET) gamma + X events at sqrt(s)=1.8 TeV with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. This first study of hadronic Z-gamma production in the neutrino decay channel gives the most stringent limits on anomalous couplings available. A fit to the transverse energy spectrum of the photon in the candidate event sample, based on a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 13.1 pb^(-1), yields 95% CL limits on the anomalous CP-conserving ZZ-gamma couplings of |h^Z_(30)|<0.9, |h^Z_(40)|<0.21, for a form-factor scale Lambda = 500 GeV. Combining these results with our previous measurement using Z -> ee and mu-mu yields the limits:|h^Z_(30)|<0.8, |h^Z_(40)|<0.19 (Lambda = 500 GeV) and |h^Z_(30)|<0.4, |h^Z_(40)|<0.06 (Lambda = 750 GeV).Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 2 table

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data