Efficient time domain threshold for sparse channel estimation in OFDM system

International audienceA novel efficient time domain threshold based sparse channel estimation technique is proposed for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed method aims to realize effective channel estimation without prior knowledge of channel statistics and noise standard deviation within a comparatively wide range of sparsity. Firstly, classical least squares (LS) method is used to get an initial channel impulse response (CIR) estimate. Then, an effective threshold, estimated from the noise coefficients of the initial estimated CIR, is proposed. Finally, the obtained threshold is used to select the most significant taps. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed method achieves better performance in both BER (bit error rate) and NMSE (normalized mean square error) than the compared methods, has good spectral efficiency and moderate computational complexity

The cadmium–mercaptoacetic acid complex contributes to the genotoxicity of mercaptoacetic acid-coated CdSe-core quantum dots

Quantum dots (QDs) have many potential clinical and biological applications because of their advantages over traditional fluorescent dyes. However, the genotoxicity potential of QDs still remains unclear. In this paper, a plasmid-based system was designed to explore the genotoxic mechanism of QDs by detecting changes in DNA configuration and biological activities. The direct chemicobiological interactions between DNA and mercaptoacetic acid-coated CdSecore QDs (MAA–QDs) were investigated. After incubation with different concentrations of MAA–QDs (0.043, 0.13, 0.4, 1.2, and 3.6 μmol/L) in the dark, the DNA conversion of the covalently closed circular (CCC) DNA to the open circular (OC) DNA was significantly enhanced (from 13.9% ± 2.2% to 59.9% ± 12.8%) while the residual transformation activity of plasmid DNA was greatly decreased (from 80.7% ± 12.8% to 13.6% ± 0.8%), which indicated that the damages to the DNA structure and biological activities induced by MAA–QDs were concentration-dependent. The electrospray ionization mass spectrometry data suggested that the observed genotoxicity might be correlated with the cadmium–mercaptoacetic acid complex (Cd–MAA) that is formed in the solution of MAA–QDs. Circular dichroism spectroscopy and transformation assay results indicated that the Cd–MAA complex might interact with DNA through the groove-binding mode and prefer binding to DNA fragments with high adenine and thymine content. Furthermore, the plasmid transformation assay could be used as an effective method to evaluate the genotoxicities of nanoparticles

16S rRNA gene sequencing reveals the correlation between the gut microbiota and the susceptibility to pathological scars

The gut microbiome profile in patients with pathological scars remains rarely known, especially those patients who are susceptible to pathological scars. Previous studies demonstrated that gut microbial dysbiosis can promote the development of a series of diseases via the interaction between gut microbiota and host. The current study aimed to explore the gut microbiota of patients who are prone to suffer from pathological scars. 35 patients with pathological scars (PS group) and 40 patients with normal scars (NS group) were recruited for collection of fecal samples to sequence the 16S ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) V3-V4 region of gut microbiota. Alpha diversity of gut microbiota showed a significant difference between NS group and PS group, and beta diversity indicated that the composition of gut microbiota in NS and PS participants was different, which implied that dysbiosis exhibits in patients who are susceptible to pathological scars. Based on phylum, genus, species levels, we demonstrated that the changing in some gut microbiota (Firmicutes; Bacteroides; Escherichia coli, etc.) may contribute to the occurrence or development of pathological scars. Moreover, the interaction network of gut microbiota in NS and PS group clearly revealed the different interaction model of each group. Our study has preliminary confirmed that dysbiosis exhibits in patients who are susceptible to pathological scars, and provide a new insight regarding the role of the gut microbiome in PS development and progression

Inorganic molecular sieves: Preparation, modification and industrial application in catalytic processes

[EN] The increasing environmental concern and promotion of “green processes” are forcing the substitution of traditional acid and base homogeneous catalysts by solid ones. Among these heterogeneous catalysts, zeolites and zeotypes can be considered as real “green” catalysts, due to their benign nature from an environmental point of view. The importance of these inorganic molecular sieves within the field of heterogeneous catalysis relies not only on their microporous structure and the related shape selectivity, but also on the flexibility of their chemical composition. Modification of the zeolite framework composition results in materials with acidic, basic or redox properties, whereas multifunctional catalysts can be obtained by introducing metals by ion exchange or impregnation procedures, that can catalyze hydrogenation–dehydrogenation reactions, and the number of commercial applications of zeolite based catalysts is continuously expanding. In this review we discuss determinant issues for the development of zeolite based catalysts, going from zeolite catalyst preparation up to their industrial application. Concerning the synthesis of microporous materials we present some of the new trends moving into larger pore structures or into organic free synthesis media procedures, thanks to the incorporation of novel organic templates or alternative framework elements, and to the use of high-throughput synthesis methods. Post-synthesis zeolite modification and final catalyst conformation for industrial use are briefly discussed. In a last section we give a thorough overview on the application of zeolites in industrial processes. Some of them are well established mature technologies, such as fluid catalytic cracking, hydrocracking or aromatics alkylation. Although the number of zeolite structures commercially used as heterogeneous catalysts in these fields is limited, the development of new catalysts is a continuous challenge due to the need for processing heavier feeds or for increasing the quality of the products. The application of zeolite based catalysts in the production of chemicals and fine chemicals is an emerging field, and will greatly depend on the discovery of new or known structures by alternative, lower cost, synthesis routes, and the fine tuning of their textural properties. Finally, biomass conversion and selective catalytic reduction for conversion of NOx are two active research fields, highlighting the interest in these potential industrial applications.The authors acknowledge financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (project Consolider-Ingenio 2010 MULTICAT).Martínez Sánchez, MC.; Corma Canós, A. (2011). Inorganic molecular sieves: Preparation, modification and industrial application in catalytic processes. Coordination Chemistry Reviews. 255(13-14):1558-1580. doi:10.1016/j.ccr.2011.03.014S1558158025513-1

Efficient Threshold based non-sample spaced sparse channel estimation in OFDM system

International audienceThis paper addresses the efficient non-sample spacedsparse channel estimation with a proposed effective threshold.The goal of this paper is to realize efficient channel estimationwith a few number of pilots and without the prior knowledgeof the channel statistics, noise standard deviation (STD) forthe non-sample spaced sparse channels. To realize this goal, aneffective noise STD estimation method based on the estimationmethod proposed in [1] and the delay tracking method proposedin [2] is developed. With the estimated noise STD, an effectivethreshold is obtained for efficient channel taps detection. Boththeoretical analysis and simulation resluts demonstrate thatwithout the prior knowledge of noise STD, the proposed methodcan achieve the approaching channel estimation performance asthe conventional compressed sensing (CS) based method

A novel effective compressed sensing based sparse channel estimation in OFDM system

International audienceThe optimal tradeoff among the channel estimation performance, spectrum efficiency and computational complexity has always been one of the major topics for wireless communication system especially OFDM system. Traditional channel estimation methods are usually based on the classical (Least Squares) LS method without considering whether the multipath channel is sparse or rich, therefore, those methods can hardly balance the channel estimation performance, spectrum efficiency and computational complexity. In this paper, we propose an effective compressed sensing (CS) based sparse channel estimation method for OFDM system. As an efficient reconstruction tool for CS, the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) is adopted in this paper for sparse channel estimation. For OMP algorithm, an good threshold is essential to promote the channel estimation accuracy. The proposed threshold is formulated based on theoretical derivation and analysis. Both simulation results and computational complexity evaluation show that the proposed method can effectively balance the channel estimation performance, spectrum efficiency and computational complexity

Noxa/Mcl-1 Balance Regulates Susceptibility of Cells to Camptothecin-Induced Apoptosis1

Although camptothecin (CPT) has been reported to induce apoptosis in various cancer cells, the molecular details of this regulation remain largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that BH3-only protein Noxa is upregulated during CPT-induced apoptosis, which is independent of p53. In addition, we show that phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling pathway is responsible for Noxa's induction. Luciferase assay and cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) knockdown experiments further demonstrate that CREB is involved in the transcriptional upregulation of Noxa. Moreover, blocking Noxa expression using specific small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) significantly reduces the apoptosis in response to CPT, indicating that Noxa is an essential mediator for CPT-induced apoptosis. Interestingly, antiapoptotic Mcl-1 was also upregulated through PI3K/Akt signaling pathway upon CPT treatment. Using immunoprecipitation assay, Noxa was found to interact with Mcl-1 in the presence or absence of CPT. Knockdown of Mcl-1 expression by short hairpin ribonucleic acid (shRNA) was shown to potentiate CPT-induced apoptosis. Consistently, ectopic overexpression of Mcl-1 rescued cells from apoptosis induced by CPT. Cells coexpressing Noxa and Mcl-1 at different ratio correlates well with the extent of apoptosis, suggesting that the balance between Noxa and Mcl-1 may determine the susceptibility of HeLa cells to CPT-induced apoptosis

An integration fault detection method using stator voltage for marine current turbines

International audienceThe marine current turbine (MCT) is becoming more and more popular to produce eco-friendly electricity.However, its performance is negatively affected by MCT imbalance fault. In this paper, an integration faultdetection method using stator voltage for MCT is proposed. This method uses an integration way to detect theimbalance fault. The proposed method comprises three steps: First, the data conversion is based on Hilberttransform and the extreme value searching, and then the imbalance fault signature extraction based on thefrequency sequences subtraction (FSS). Last, to reduce the data dimension and to set the fault detection limit, adata vector selection method based on principal components analysis (PCA) (called preliminary-selection-basedPCA (PS-PCA)) is proposed, the adaptive fault detection is realized by calculating Hotelling T2 and SPE (squaredprediction error). Finally, a marine current prototype experimental platform was built to verify the proposedmethods. The experimental results show that the method in this paper has high detection accuracy in the faultdetection of MCT imbalance under the variable flow rate

A Sparse Autoencoder and Softmax Regression Based Diagnosis Method for the Attachment on the Blades of Marine Current Turbine

The development and application of marine current energy are attracting more and more attention around the world. Due to the hardness of its working environment, it is important and difficult to study the fault diagnosis of a marine current generation system. In this paper, an underwater image is chosen as the fault-diagnosing signal, after different sensors are compared. This paper proposes a diagnosis method based on the sparse autoencoder (SA) and softmax regression (SR). The SA is used to extract the features and SR is used to classify them. Images are used to monitor whether the blade is attached by benthos and to determine its corresponding degree of attachment. Compared with other methods, the experiment results show that the proposed method can diagnose the blade attachment with higher accuracy

A Novel Threshold based Compressed Channel Sensing in OFDM System

International audienceHigh speed data transmission for wireless communication in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system requires effective channel state information (CSI). CSI should be precisely estimated with low consumption of spectral resources and acceptable computational cost. To realize this goal, an effective compressed sensing (CS) based channel estimation scheme is proposed for sparse channels with large delay spreads, without prior knowledge of channel statistics and noise standard deviation. By fully considering the rank of the measurement matrix, a novel algorithm based on orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) and least squares (LS) methods with a new threshold is proposed for effective channel estimation. Simulation results show that with fewer number of pilots, the proposed method outperforms the compared existing channel estimation methods in a comprehensive way and approaches the optimal channel estimation performance