Interference Mitigation for coded MB-OFDM UWB

Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) standard for high rate Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless communication in the 3.1– 10.6 GHz band. The performance of MB-OFDM is impacted by interference from IEEE 802.16 WiMAX systems operating in the licensed 3.5 GHz band. Motivated by recent work showing the approximately Gaussian nature of the WiMAX interference to MB-OFDM, we propose a simple two-stage interference mitigation technique for coded MB-OFDM transmissions according to the ECMA-368 standard, consisting of interference spectrum estimation during silent periods followed by appropriate bit metric weighting during Viterbi decoding. We compare parametric and non-parametric spectrum estimation techniques for coded MB-OFDM transmissions and WiMAX interference for various scenarios of interest. The proposed two-stage interference mitigation technique is shown to be highly effective at mitigating the impact of WiMAX interference

Evaluation of Survey Indices for Scaled Quail in West Texas

Wildlife biologists and land managers require information on population demographics to effectively plan harvest schedules and evaluate habitat modifications. Population indices can potentially provide an efficient way to gather reliable information on wildlife populations as long as they reflect population behavior. We evaluated the relationships among standard survey indices used to monitor scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) across 6 sites in west Texas from 2007 to 2010. We collected data on spring cock call counts, simulated nest survival, roadside counts, and helicopter counts. The mean difference between methods was 2.4 quail/1.6 km on the Andrews County sites, and 4 quail/1.6 km at the Upton/Reagan County sites. Roadside counts and helicopter counts had similar numerical trends in relative abundance with a correlation coefficient of (0.67). Simulated nest fate (i.e., dummy nests) tended to track trends in population abundance. Our survey indices also followed annual fluctuations in scaled quail abundance as estimated from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s annual roadside surveys

Taxonomy Induction using Hypernym Subsequences

We propose a novel, semi-supervised approach towards domain taxonomy induction from an input vocabulary of seed terms. Unlike all previous approaches, which typically extract direct hypernym edges for terms, our approach utilizes a novel probabilistic framework to extract hypernym subsequences. Taxonomy induction from extracted subsequences is cast as an instance of the minimumcost flow problem on a carefully designed directed graph. Through experiments, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms stateof- the-art taxonomy induction approaches across four languages. Importantly, we also show that our approach is robust to the presence of noise in the input vocabulary. To the best of our knowledge, no previous approaches have been empirically proven to manifest noise-robustness in the input vocabulary

Role of the Chondroitin Sulfate Proteoglycan, Neurocan, in Inhibition of Sensory Neurite Regeneration

In the adult mammalian brain and spinal cord, neuronal injury results in failed neurite regeneration, in part due to the up-regulation of chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs). CSPGs are molecules consisting of a protein core with covalently bound glycosaminoglycans (GAGS), specifically, chondroitin sulfate side-chains. The majority of CSPGs produced after injury originate from reactive astrocytes found in the glial scar surrounding the injury site. Although this milieu is very complex and involves more than just CSPGs, axonal regrowth may be improved if the expression of specific, highly inhibitory CSPGs produced after injury were attenuated selectively. Neurocan is one type of CSPG that is upregulated after injury and inhibits neurite regeneration. The over-arching goal of this study is to focus on the response and growth of sensory neurons in the presence of astrocytes that express neurocan, in relation to those astrocytes in which neurocan has been “knocked down” by shRNA transfection. In order to perform this analysis, the conditions needed for the co-culture experiment of chick astrocytes and chick neurons were optimized. A series of preliminary tests were performed on chick astrocytes, including a test to monitor the upregulation of CSPGs after treatment with Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β), previously shown to mimic injury in an In vitro setting in rat astrocytes (G. Curinga et. al, 2008), and a test to demonstrate that chick astrocytes express Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP) in culture. Through these optimizations, co-culture analysis will be used to evaluate neuronal responses to neurocan. Other techniques used were tissue culture, immunofluorescence, and neurite outgrowth analyses

The Effect of the Lake Restoration Project on Passerine Bird Diversity

A three page summary by six Furman students showing their research results on the lake restoration\u27s effects on passerine bird populations.https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/lake-documents/1017/thumbnail.jp

Technologies and Methods Used at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) to Serve Solar Irradiance Data

The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA operates the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) NASA mission, as well as several other NASA spacecraft and instruments. Dozens of Solar Irradiance data sets are produced, managed, and disseminated to the science community. Data are made freely available to the scientific immediately after they are produced using a variety of data access interfaces, including the LASP Interactive Solar Irradiance Datacenter (LISIRD), which provides centralized access to a variety of solar irradiance data sets using both interactive and scriptable/programmatic methods. This poster highlights the key technological elements used for the NASA SORCE mission ground system to produce, manage, and disseminate data to the scientific community and facilitate long-term data stewardship. The poster presentation will convey designs, technological elements, practices and procedures, and software management processes used for SORCE and their relationship to data quality and data management standards, interoperability, NASA data policy, and community expectations