Reducing variance in univariate smoothing

A variance reduction technique in nonparametric smoothing is proposed: at each point of estimation, form a linear combination of a preliminary estimator evaluated at nearby points with the coefficients specified so that the asymptotic bias remains unchanged. The nearby points are chosen to maximize the variance reduction. We study in detail the case of univariate local linear regression. While the new estimator retains many advantages of the local linear estimator, it has appealing asymptotic relative efficiencies. Bandwidth selection rules are available by a simple constant factor adjustment of those for local linear estimation. A simulation study indicates that the finite sample relative efficiency often matches the asymptotic relative efficiency for moderate sample sizes. This technique is very general and has a wide range of applications.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053606000001398 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Reactive oxygen species are involved in regulating α1-adrenoceptor-activated vascular smooth muscle contraction

Abstract Background Reactive oxygen species (ROS) were shown to mediate aberrant contractility in hypertension, yet the physiological roles of ROS in vascular smooth muscle contraction have remained elusive. This study aimed to examine whether ROS regulate α1-adrenoceptor-activated contraction by altering myosin phosphatase activities. Methods Using endothelium-denuded rat tail artery (RTA) strips, effects of anti-oxidants on isometric force, ROS production, phosphorylation of the 20-kDa myosin light chain (MLC20), and myosin phosphatase stimulated by α1-adrenoceptor agonist phenylephrine were examined. Results An antioxidant, N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), and two NADPH oxidase inhibitors, apocynin and VAS2870, dose-dependently inhibited contraction activated by phenylephrine. Phenylephrine stimulated superoxide anion production that was diminished by the pretreatment of apocynin, VAS2870, superoxide scavenger tiron or mitochondria inhibitor rotenone, but not by xanthine oxidase inhibitor allopurinol or cyclooxygenase inhibitor indomethacin. Concurrently, NADPH oxidase activity in RTA homogenates increased within 1 min upon phenylephrine stimulation, sustained for 10 min, and was abolished by the co-treatment with apocynin, but not allopurinol or rotenone. Phenylephrine-induced MLC20 phosphorylation was dose-dependently decreased by apocynin. Furthermore, apocynin inhibited phenylephrine-stimulated RhoA translocation to plasma membrane and phosphorylation of both myosin phosphatase regulatory subunit MYPT1Thr855 and myosin phosphatase inhibitor CPI-17Thr38. Conclusions ROS, probably derived from NADPH oxidase and mitochondria, partially regulate α1-adrenoceptor-activated smooth muscle contraction by altering myosin phosphatase-mediated MLC20 phosphorylation through both RhoA/Rho kinase- and CPI-17-dependent pathways.</p

Analysis of Tumbling Motions by Combining Telemetry Data and Radio Signal

The pointing accuracy and stabilization property of the payload of a satellite depends on performance of attitude determination and control system (ADCS). An essential role of the ADCS is to stabilize the spacecraft in early operation stage and in the presence of anomalies. During this stage, the satellite may be subject to tumbling and a high-reliability method is deemed important to recover the satellite from this stage into its normal operation stage. In the paper, the use of magnetometer data and radio signal characteristics is investigated with the goal of determining the satellite tumbling rate confidently. The proposed method is applied to the PHOENIX CubeSat, which is a CubeSat that is developed by National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan as a part of the QB50 project, at its early orbit stage

Incompressible SPH simulation of flow past a horizontal cylinder between plane wall and free surface

Flow past a circular cylinder located between free-surface and wall boundaries is modelled numerically using non-uniform particle size incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Several enhancements including Rhie and Chow interpolation, colour function-based free surface tracking, and modified particle shifting are introduced to increase the accuracy and efficiency of the method. A parameter study at constant Reynolds number, Re=150, examines the influence of Froude number (Fr=0.2−0.6), submergence ratio (H∕D=0.5−1.0, where H is the distance between the apex of the cylinder and undisturbed free surface, and D is the cylinder diameter), and bottom gap ratio (G∕D=1.0−5.0, where G is the distance between the base of the cylinder and the bed) on the ambient free-surface flow pattern and hydrodynamic force on the cylinder. It is found that the vortex shedding pattern depends on all three parameters. As the Froude number increases for fixed submergence ratio and bottom gap ratio, vortex shedding is eventually suppressed. As the submergence and bottom gap ratios increase, the threshold of vortex shedding suppression shifts to higher values of Froude number. The mean drag coefficient depends on the submergence ratio and bottom gap ratio but is independent of Froude number. Meanwhile, the lift coefficient depends on submergence ratio and Froude number but is independent of bottom gap ratio. Spectral analysis of force and free-surface elevation time signals shows that the free-surface deformation and lift force are closely related during the vortex shedding regime

Approximate convex decomposition and its applications

Geometric computations are essential in many real-world problems. One important issue in geometric computations is that the geometric models in these problems can be so large that computations on them have infeasible storage or computation time requirements. Decomposition is a technique commonly used to partition complex models into simpler components. Whereas decomposition into convex components results in pieces that are easy to process, such decompositions can be costly to construct and can result in representations with an unmanageable number of components. In this work, we have developed an approximate technique, called Approximate Convex Decomposition (ACD), which decomposes a given polygon or polyhedron into "approximately convex" pieces that may provide similar benefits as convex components, while the resulting decomposition is both significantly smaller (typically by orders of magnitude) and can be computed more efficently. Indeed, for many applications, an ACD can represent the important structural features of the model more accurately by providing a mechanism for ignoring less significant features, such as wrinkles and surface texture. Our study of a wide range of applications shows that in addition to providing computational efficiency, ACD also provides natural multi-resolution or hierarchical representations. In this dissertation, we provide some examples of ACD's many potential applications, such as particle simulation, mesh generation, motion planning, and skeleton extraction