Adversarial Convolutional Networks with Weak Domain-Transfer for Multi-sequence Cardiac MR Images Segmentation

Analysis and modeling of the ventricles and myocardium are important in the diagnostic and treatment of heart diseases. Manual delineation of those tissues in cardiac MR (CMR) scans is laborious and time-consuming. The ambiguity of the boundaries makes the segmentation task rather challenging. Furthermore, the annotations on some modalities such as Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) MRI, are often not available. We propose an end-to-end segmentation framework based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and adversarial learning. A dilated residual U-shape network is used as a segmentor to generate the prediction mask; meanwhile, a CNN is utilized as a discriminator model to judge the segmentation quality. To leverage the available annotations across modalities per patient, a new loss function named weak domain-transfer loss is introduced to the pipeline. The proposed model is evaluated on the public dataset released by the challenge organizer in MICCAI 2019, which consists of 45 sets of multi-sequence CMR images. We demonstrate that the proposed adversarial pipeline outperforms baseline deep-learning methods.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, conferenc

Comment on ``Relativistic kinetic equations for electromagnetic, scalar and pseudoscalar interactions''

It is found that the extra quantum constraints to the spinor components of the equal-time Wigner function given in a recent paper by Zhuang and Heinz should vanish identically. We point out here the origin of the error and give an interpretation of the result. However, the principal idea of obtaining a complete equal-time transport theory by energy averaging the covariant theory remains valid. The classical transport equation for the spin density is also found to be incorrect. We give here the correct form of that equation and discuss briefly its structure.Comment: 5 pages LaTe

Investigation to direct ethanol injection in spark ignition gasoline engines

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Ethanol is a promising alternative fuel in terms of addressing future energy and environmental problems. The existing method of using ethanol fuel by blending gasoline and ethanol fuel does not fully exploit ethanol’s advantages. The dual-fuel injection strategy, ethanol direct injection plus gasoline port injection (EDI+GPI), offers a potentially new way to make use of ethanol fuel more effectively and efficiently. The effect of EDI+GPI on engine performance has been experimentally investigated on a 249cc, 4 stroke, air cooled single cylinder engine which was modified by adding an ethanol fuel direct injection system. The research purpose was focused on efficiency improvement (leveraging effect) and emissions reduction. Engine performance at original engine spark timing setting (15 CAD BTDC), knock margin and lean conditions was carried out to assess EDI+GPI’s effectiveness. The impacts of EDI+GPI on engine control parameters, such as start of injection (SOI) timing and spark timing, were also evaluated in order to best match this new fuelling system to conventional SI engines. When the engine was operating at the original engine spark timing setting (15 CAD BTDC), less energy input was required in a SI engine equipped with EDI+GPI to achieve comparable engine power output. Thus, the total fuel consumption could be reduced by leveraging the use of ethanol fuel. At engine speed of 3500rpm, when the ethanol energy ratio (EER) was less than 42.4% at light load and 36.3% at medium load, the EDI+GPI showed a positive impact in relation to combustion with reduced combustion duration and advanced central combustion phasing. However, with further increase of EER, the combustion duration prolonged and central combustion phasing retarded. This may be caused by over cooling due to increased ethanol fuel directly injected. EDI+GPI effectively mitigated engine knock and permitted more advanced spark timing and higher inlet air pressure. At three tested engine loads of indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP), 7.2 Bar, 7.8 Bar and 8.5 Bar, every 2% or 3% increment of EER permitted about 2 CAD advance of knock limited spark advance (KLSA) when the EER was in the range from 15% to 35%. The highest load achieved in this investigation was 10.5 Bar IMEP at inlet (compressed) air pressure of 1.4 Bar. The EER level at this condition was 36.9%. Early ethanol direct injection (EEDI) was more suitable to the EDI+GPI engine since the IMEP in EEDI conditions was greater than that in later ethanol direct injection (LEDI) conditions due to improved volumetric efficiency and combustion. LEDI was less effective on increasing IMEP because its major combustion duration was longer than that in the EEDI condition. In lean burn, EEDI was more effective on extending the lean burn limit than LEDI. The maximum lean burn limit (λ) achieved by EEDI was 1.29. LEDI only slightly increased the lean burn limit which was just over the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio (AFR). When the EER varied, spark timing required corresponding changes to achieve the best efficiency. At IMEP of around 4.0 Bar, spark timing of 25 CAD BTDC resulted in the highest indicated thermal efficiency when the EER was less than 29%, whilst when the EER was greater than 39%, the maximum indicated thermal efficiency was at spark timing of 30 CAD BTDC

Double-active-layer index-guided InGaAsP-InP laser diode

A buried crescent InGaAsP-InP laser with two active layers was fabricated to study the temperature behavior of the double-carrier-confinement structure. An anomalously high characteristic temperature T0 was measured, and optical switching behavior was observed. A mode analysis and numerical calculation using a rate equation approach explained qualitatively very well the experimental results. It was revealed that both the Auger recombination in this special double-active-layer configuration and the temperature-dependent leakage current, which leads to uniform carrier distribution in both active regions, are essential to increase T0

Hysteretic current-voltage characteristics and resistance switching at an epitaxial oxide Schottky junction SrRuO3_{3}/SrTi0.99_{0.99}Nb0.01_{0.01}O3_{3}

Transport properties have been studied for a perovskite heterojunction consisting of SrRuO$_{3}$ (SRO) film epitaxially grown on SrTi$_{0.99}$Nb$_{0.01}$O$_{3}$ (Nb:STO) substrate. The SRO/Nb:STO interface exhibits rectifying current-voltage ($I$-$V$) characteristics agreeing with those of a Schottky junction composed of a deep work-function metal (SRO) and an $n$-type semiconductor (Nb:STO). A hysteresis appears in the $I$-$V$ characteristics, where high resistance and low resistance states are induced by reverse and forward bias stresses, respectively. The resistance switching is also triggered by applying short voltage pulses of 1 $\mu$s - 10 ms duration.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Appl. Phys. Lett., in pres

A Survey of Positioning Systems Using Visible LED Lights

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As Global Positioning System (GPS) cannot provide satisfying performance in indoor environments, indoor positioning technology, which utilizes indoor wireless signals instead of GPS signals, has grown rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, visible light communication (VLC) using light devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been deemed to be a promising candidate in the heterogeneous wireless networks that may collaborate with radio frequencies (RF) wireless networks. In particular, light-fidelity has a great potential for deployment in future indoor environments because of its high throughput and security advantages. This paper provides a comprehensive study of a novel positioning technology based on visible white LED lights, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. The essential characteristics and principles of this system are deeply discussed, and relevant positioning algorithms and designs are classified and elaborated. This paper undertakes a thorough investigation into current LED-based indoor positioning systems and compares their performance through many aspects, such as test environment, accuracy, and cost. It presents indoor hybrid positioning systems among VLC and other systems (e.g., inertial sensors and RF systems). We also review and classify outdoor VLC positioning applications for the first time. Finally, this paper surveys major advances as well as open issues, challenges, and future research directions in VLC positioning systems.Peer reviewe

The Spread and Regional Development of Wheat Farming in the Yellow River Valley under the Han Empire

We synthesize recent archaeological discoveries on the spread of Han wheat farming, including archaeobotanical evidence, artefacts related to wheat farming and wheat flour processing, and discovered texts such as wooden slips. We cross-examine the archaeological data with transmitted historical records within the wider social and cultural contexts of the Yellow River valley and adjacent regions. We conclude that the spread of wheat farming in the Middle Yellow River region was slower than that of the Lower Yellow River region due to environmental and social reasons. After Emperor Wu’s era, wheat farming began to take off in both regions, which was characterized by its expanding geographic distributions, its increasing importance in the imperial agricultural economies and its growing recognition by the society. The beneficial factors, including favorable climate-environmental conditions, accumulating agronomic knowledge, technological innovations and other factors, and changing dietary traditions played diverse roles in the regional development of wheat farming in these regions