14,480 research outputs found
Improving International Evidence-Gathering Methods: Piercing Bank Secrecy Laws from Switzerland to the Caribbean and Beyond
Brief of Law Professors as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondent
Inventors lacking assurance of a market, or even the right to practice patented inventions, face considerable risk. Those who qualify for patents, in return for disclosure, receive only the assistance of the courts in excluding others from economic exploitation of their inventions. Already subject to many legislative and judicial limitations, patents should not be further subject to the functional equivalent of private inverse condemnation without congressional action
Extension of the Adler-Bobenko-Suris classification of integrable lattice equations
The classification of lattice equations that are integrable in the sense of
higher-dimensional consistency is extended by allowing directed edges. We find
two cases that are not transformable via the 'admissible transformations' to
the lattice equations in the existing classification.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure
The effective string spectrum in the orthogonal gauge
The low-energy effective action on long string-like objects in quantum field
theory, such as confining strings, includes the Nambu-Goto action and then
higher-derivative corrections. This action is diffeomorphism-invariant, and can
be analyzed in various gauges. Polchinski and Strominger suggested a specific
way to analyze this effective action in the orthogonal gauge, in which the
induced metric on the worldsheet is conformally equivalent to a flat metric.
Their suggestion leads to a specific term at the next order beyond the
Nambu-Goto action. We compute the leading correction to the Nambu-Goto spectrum
using the action that includes this term, and we show that it agrees with the
leading correction previously computed in the static gauge. This gives a
consistency check for the framework of Polchinski and Strominger, and helps to
understand its relation to the theory in the static gauge.Comment: 21 page
A Novel Real-Time Non-invasive Hemoglobin Level Detection Using Video Images from Smartphone Camera
Hemoglobin level detection is necessary for evaluating health condition in the human. In the laboratory setting, it is detected by shining light through a small volume of blood and using a colorimetric electronic particle counting algorithm. This invasive process requires time, blood specimens, laboratory equipment, and facilities. There are also many studies on non-invasive hemoglobin level detection. Existing solutions are expensive and require buying additional devices. In this paper, we present a smartphone-based non-invasive hemoglobin detection method. It uses the video images collected from the fingertip of a person. We hypothesized that there is a significant relation between the fingertip mini-video images and the hemoglobin level by laboratory gold standard. We also discussed other non-invasive methods and compared with our model. Finally, we described our findings and discussed future works
Technical Note: A numerical test-bed for detailed ice nucleation studies in the AIDA cloud simulation chamber
The AIDA (Aerosol Interactions and Dynamics in the Atmosphere) aerosol and cloud chamber of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe can be used to test the ice forming ability of aerosols. The AIDA chamber is extensively instrumented including pressure, temperature and humidity sensors, and optical particle counters. Expansion cooling using mechanical pumps leads to ice supersaturation conditions and possible ice formation. In order to describe the evolving chamber conditions during an expansion, a parcel model was modified to account for diabatic heat and moisture interactions with the chamber walls. Model results are shown for a series of expansions where the initial chamber temperature ranged from −20°C to −60°C and which used desert dust as ice forming nuclei. During each expansion, the initial formation of ice particles was clearly observed. For the colder expansions there were two clear ice nucleation episodes. <br><br> In order to test the ability of the model to represent the changing chamber conditions and to give confidence in the observations of chamber temperature and humidity, and ice particle concentration and mean size, ice particles were simply added as a function of time so as to reproduce the observations of ice crystal concentration. The time interval and chamber conditions over which ice nucleation occurs is therefore accurately known, and enables the model to be used as a test bed for different representations of ice formation
Comparative interactomics provides evidence for functional specialization of the nuclear pore complex
Sending the message:specialized RNA export mechanisms in trypanosomes
Export of RNA from the nucleus is essential for all eukaryotic cells, with at least three major classes exported, mRNA, tRNA and rRNA. RNA export has emerged as a major step in the control of gene expression, with mRNA molecules required to complete a complex series of processing events and pass a quality control system to protect the cytoplasm from the expression of aberrant proteins. Many of these events are highly conserved across eukaryotes, reflecting their ancient origin, but significant deviation from a canonical pathway as described from animals and fungi has emerged in the trypanosomatids. With significant implications for the mechanisms that control gene expression and hence differentiation, responses to altered environments and fitness as a parasite, these deviations may also reveal additional, previously unsuspected, mRNA export pathways
Comparing and validating models of driver steering behaviour in collision avoidance and vehicle stabilisation
A number of driver models were fitted to a large data set of human truck driving, from a simulated near-crash, low-friction scenario, yielding two main insights: steering to avoid a collision was best described as an open-loop manoeuvre of predetermined duration, but with situation-adapted amplitude, and subsequent vehicle stabilisation could to a large extent be accounted for by a simple yaw rate nulling control law. These two phenomena, which could be hypothesised to generalise to passenger car driving, were found to determine the ability of four driver models adopted from the literature to fit the human data. Based on the obtained results, it is argued that the concept of internal vehicle models may be less valuable when modelling driver behaviour in non-routine situations such as near-crashes, where behaviour may be better described as direct responses to salient perceptual cues. Some methodological issues in comparing and validating driver models are also discussed
On a common circle: natural scenes and Gestalt rules
To understand how the human visual system analyzes images, it is essential to
know the structure of the visual environment. In particular, natural images
display consistent statistical properties that distinguish them from random
luminance distributions. We have studied the geometric regularities of oriented
elements (edges or line segments) present in an ensemble of visual scenes,
asking how much information the presence of a segment in a particular location
of the visual scene carries about the presence of a second segment at different
relative positions and orientations. We observed strong long-range correlations
in the distribution of oriented segments that extend over the whole visual
field. We further show that a very simple geometric rule, cocircularity,
predicts the arrangement of segments in natural scenes, and that different
geometrical arrangements show relevant differences in their scaling properties.
Our results show similarities to geometric features of previous physiological
and psychophysical studies. We discuss the implications of these findings for
theories of early vision.Comment: 3 figures, 2 large figures not include
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