Adjacent Patterns Research Articles

Capillary imbibition in pattern charged nanotubes

Capillary imbibition of water plays a significant role in various applications at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. However, it is still unclear how the capillary imbibition would be effected by the surface conditions, in particular, the charge patterns in the nanotubes. In this paper, we discuss the capillary imbibition dynamics in pattern charged nanotubes by molecular dynamics simulations. Two common charge patterns are considered, i.e. the adjacent charge pattern and barred charge pattern. It is found that velocity of the water imbibition in the barred pattern charged nanotube exhibits a strong impediment effect while the adjacent pattern charged nanotube shows no effect. By analyzing the microscopic distribution of the water molecules, it is found that the impediment effect originates from the decreased number of hydrogen bonds between the first monolayer water and the inner water shells, where a hexagonal ice-like hydrogen bond network of the water molecules would be induced in the first monolayer water by the barred charge pattern. The time variations of the filling length of the two charge patterns are also compared with the theoretical predictions in the continuous limit at the inertial and viscous regime respectively. Furthermore, it is also found that the impediment effect could be manipulated by varying the charge value and nanotube radius. Our results suggest a possible way to control the capillary imbibition behavior and it may have significant implications for water treatment, nanoswitches, catalysis engines and biological sensors.

Combined defocusing triangular pulse width modulation fringe pattern and Gray code for absolute phase measurement

Projecting defocused binary pattern method can overcome the nonlinear gamma effect of the projector, as well as filter high harmonics, but it is sensitive to defocus levels. Therefore, it makes it difficult to generate both comparable performance to ideal sinusoidal fringe patterns and good quality Gray code when only a small number of phase shift patterns are used. To overcome this problem, a phase unwrapping approach combined Gray code with phase-shifting fringe patterns generated by triangular pulse width modulation (TPWM) technique based on slight defocusing is proposed. The phase is retrieved using a four-step phase-shifting method, and the corresponding phase order is obtained by Gray-code patterns. Because of defocusing projection, the boundaries of two adjacent Gray-code patterns become blurred, which make the recovery of accurate Gray-code patterns difficult. To solve this problem, we propose to project an all-white pattern and an all-black pattern to obtain threshold values, which are used to execute the binarization of Gray-code patterns. This approach is robustness to different defocus levels of projector. Experiments are submitted to verify that the proposed technique can be utilized to high-accuracy three-dimensional shape measurement of complex and/or discontinuous objects.

Zero to moderate methane emissions in a densely rooted, pristine Patagonian bog – biogeochemical controls as revealed from isotopic evidence

Abstract. Peatlands are significant global methane (CH4) sources, but processes governing CH4 dynamics have been predominantly studied in the Northern Hemisphere. Southern hemispheric and tropical bogs can be dominated by cushion-forming vascular plants (e.g. Astelia pumila, Donatia fascicularis). These cushion bogs are found in many (mostly southern) parts of the world but could also serve as extreme examples for densely rooted northern hemispheric bogs dominated by rushes and sedges. We report highly variable summer CH4 emissions from different microforms in a Patagonian cushion bog as determined by chamber measurements. Driving biogeochemical processes were identified from pore water profiles and carbon isotopic signatures. Intensive root activity throughout a rhizosphere stretching over 2 m in depth accompanied by molecular oxygen release created aerobic microsites in water-saturated peat, leading to a thorough CH4 oxidation (< 0.003 mmol L−1 pore water CH4, enriched in δ13C-CH4 by up to 10 ‰) and negligible emissions (0.09±0.16 mmol CH4 m−2 d−1) from Astelia lawns. In sparsely or even non-rooted peat below adjacent pools pore water profile patterns similar to those obtained under Astelia lawns, which emitted very small amounts of CH4 (0.23±0.25 mmol m−2 d−1), were found. Below the A. pumila rhizosphere pore water concentrations increased sharply to 0.40±0.25 mmol CH4 L−1 and CH4 was predominantly produced by hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. A few Sphagnum lawns and – surprisingly – one lawn dominated by cushion-forming D. fascicularis were found to be local CH4 emission hotspots with up to 1.52±1.10 mmol CH4 m−2 d−1 presumably as root density and molecular oxygen release dropped below a certain threshold. The spatial distribution of root characteristics supposedly causing such a pronounced CH4 emission pattern was evaluated on a conceptual level aiming to exemplify scenarios in densely rooted bogs. We conclude that presence of cushion vegetation as a proxy for negligible CH4 emissions from cushion bogs needs to be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, overall ecosystem CH4 emissions at our study site were probably minute compared to bog ecosystems worldwide and widely decoupled from environmental controls due to intensive root activity of A. pumila, for example.

Patterned Surfaces for Solar-Driven Interfacial Evaporation.

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation, as one of the most effective ways to convert and utilize solar energy, has attracted lot of interest recently. Most of the previous research studies, however, mainly focused on nonpatterned solar absorbers by improving the structural and chemical characteristics of the solar absorbers used in the interfacial evaporation systems. In this work, we investigated the influence of patterned surface on the evaporation performance of solar absorbers. The patterned surfaces studied, which include black patterns and white patterns, were achieved by selectively printing carbon black on the air-laid paper. Such a design leads to the lateral temperature differences between adjacent patterns of the solar absorber under solar illumination. The temperature differences result in the lateral heat and mass transfer between those patterns, which can effectively accelerate solar-driven vapor generation. With similar patterns and same coverage of carbon black, the increase in the circumference of the surface patterns leads to the increase in the evaporation performance. Additionally, we found that the evaporation performance can be optimized through the design of surface patterns, which demonstrates the potential in reducing the usage of the light-absorbing materials in the solar absorber. The findings in this work not only expand the understanding of the interfacial evaporation systems but also offer additional guidelines in designing interfacial evaporation systems.

Local bit plane adjacent neighborhood dissimilarity pattern for medical CT image retrieval

In this article, new feature descriptor local bit plane adjacent neighborhood dissimilarity pattern (LBPANDP) is introduced for CT image retrieval. In the proposed method, the input image is first decomposed into eight binary bit planes. Then in each of the first four most significant bit planes, for each center pixel, the dissimilarity information of its binary neighbors are encoded into a single value. The encoded values of each bit plane is then compared with the intensity of the center pixel and this relationship is finally encoded to devise the LBPANDP descriptor. The proposed descriptor is highly discriminative and considers only the first four most significant bit planes for encoding, which greatly reduces the dimension of the feature vector. Retrieval performance of LBPANDP is investigated on two CT image databases and the results show a significant improvement in retrieval efficiency by LBPANDPover many recent techniques.

Global and Local Characterization of Rock Classification by Gabor and DCT Filters with a Color Texture Descriptor

In the automatic classification of colored natural textures, the idea of proposing methods that reflect human perception arouses the enthusiasm of researchers in the field of image processing and computer vision. Therefore, the color space and the methods of analysis of color and texture, must be discriminating to correspond to the human vision. Rock images are a typical example of natural images and their analysis is of major importance in the rock industry. In this paper, we combine the statistical (Local Binary Pattern (LBP) with Hue Saturation Value (HSV) and Red Green Blue (RGB) color spaces fusion) and frequency (Gabor filter and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)) descriptors named respectively Gabor Adjacent Local Binary Pattern Color Space Fusion (G-ALBPCSF) and DCT Adjacent Local Binary Pattern Color Space Fusion (D-ALBPCSF) for the extraction of visual textural and colorimetric features from direct view images of rocks. The textural images from the two G-ALBPCSF and D-ALBPCSF approaches are evaluated through similarity metrics such as Chi2 and the intersection of histograms that we have adapted to color histograms. The results obtained allowed us to highlight the discrimination of the rock classes. The proposed extraction method provides better classification results for various direct view rock texture images. Then it is validated by a confusion matrix giving a low error rate of 0.8% of classification.

Determination of water content and characteristic analysis in substrate root zone by electrical impedance spectroscopy

The root zone of a plant is an important system that provides a base for use of nutrients and water and has been the focus of many researchers’ work. This paper examines a new electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement approach within the 100 Hz–2 MHz range in the substrate root zone that uses an adjacent stimulation and measurement pattern that overcomes the shortcomings of conventional methods and better reflects physiochemical changes in stereoscopic space. We used a highly controllable mixed solid substrate to simulate the root zone. The experimental results show that three impedance features, comprising the mean of the real part of the complex impedance within the 1–10 kHz range, the characteristic frequency and the extremum of the imaginary part of the complex impedance are strongly exponentially correlated with the water content of the cylindrical substrate, in which the minimum coefficient of determination denoted by R2 is 0.9247. This indicates that these features can serve as indicators of the substrate’s water content. In addition, the substrate-plant continuum was investigated and we found that the presence of the plant had a strong impact on the impedance response, and particularly on the data from the equipotential contralateral side, which can be used for root zone plant positioning. Additionally, analysis of the variation of the phase angle shows that the position of the plant underground has little effect on the frequency corresponding to the maximum absolute phase difference, which provides a reference for frequency selection in the impedance measurement and tomography system of the substrate root zone. We conclude that EIS can be used to monitor the plant morphology and also provides a way to determine the optimal frequency for impedance measurement.

Improved Transmitter Jitter Modeling for Accurate Bit Error Rate (BER) Eye Contours Using Transient Simulation of Short Bit Patterns

Increase in the signaling speeds has led to decrease in jitter budget available for the channel to pass the product specifications. The current serial link specifications are based on a bit-error-rate (BER) metric and hence there is a need to account for jitter statistically. Accurately capturing jitter through the channel is very important to have confidence in the product specifications. Current statistical eye approaches are based on either single pulse/step response or multiple edge responses, which do not account for transmitter (Tx) driver jitter accurately since jitter interaction between the edges is ignored. There is an inherent assumption in pulse/step response methods that there is zero correlation between independent responses created from 2n combinations for n cursor pulse response where n is number where the tail settles, hence one zero crossing does not impact an adjacent zero crossing. Transient simulation accurately accounts for Tx jitter but is time consuming and requires large memory when simulating very large bit sequences. A new methodology is proposed to generate BER contours that capture the Tx driver jitter and inter symbol interference (ISI) through the channel accurately using unique waveforms created from truth table bit combinations. It utilizes 2N short N bit patterns as waveforms with jitter correlation from current bit patterns into adjacent bit patterns to get equivalent transient simulation of a desired pseudo random bit sequence. The method accounts for the edge interactions from any current bit pattern to next successive bit pattern to account for ISI accurately. The statistical eye diagram generated with the above approach includes nonideal channel characteristics, including ISI, XTK from nearby aggressor channels, and jitter through the channel.

Water and nitrate exchange between a managed river and peri-urban floodplain aquifer: Quantification and management implications

The management of rivers for navigation, hydropower and flood risk reduction involves the installation of in-channel structures. These influence river levels and can affect groundwater flow within hydraulically-connected riparian floodplain aquifers. A comprehensively monitored, peri-urban, lowland river floodplain in the southern United Kingdom was used to explore these dependencies and to examine the implications for the flux exchange of water and nitrate between the river and the floodplain alluvial aquifer. The study demonstrated that rivers maintained at high levels by management structures, result in raised groundwater levels in the adjacent aquifer and complex groundwater flow patterns. Engineered river management structures were shown to promote flow from river to aquifer through the river bed but the majority of the associated nitrate was removed in the hyporheic zone. High-nitrate groundwater recharge to the alluvial aquifer also occurred through overbank flood flows. Across the floodplain, substantial denitrification occurred due to anaerobic conditions resulting from carbon-rich sediments and the shallow water table, the latter linked to the river management structures. An upper limit on the total annual mass of nitrate removed from river water entering the floodplain aquifer was estimated for the study site (2.9 × 104 kg), which was three orders of magnitude lower than the estimate of annual in-channel nitrate flux (1.8 × 107 kg). However, this capacity of lowland floodplains to reduce groundwater nitrate concentrations has local benefits, for example for private and public water supplies sourced from alluvial aquifers. The insights from the study also have relevance for those considering schemes that include the installation, removal or redesign of river management structures, as the resultant change in groundwater levels may have consequences for floodplain meadows and the nutrient status of the aquatic system.

Finding Test Pairs for PDFs in Logic Circuits Based on Using Operations on ROBDDs

A method of finding all test pairs for robust testable Path Delay Faults (PDFs) is suggested. In foreign literature, the authors find only one or several subsets of the test pairs. In this paper, the test pairs are formed from sequential sets and represented compactly by the Reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagram (ROBDD). In this paper, the test pairs are formed from adjacent test patterns. All such test pairs are compactly represented by the ROBDD. Having got all test pairs for a path, we may derive a test sequence detecting the robust PDFs of the path in sequential circuits without using Scan techniques. In addition, having got the above-mentioned ROBDDs for a set of paths, we may find compact test sets for the Scan techniques oriented to decreased power consumption during testing. Finding all test pairs is reduced to deriving a Boolean difference for the path considered. The Boolean difference is obtained by applying operations on ROBDDs involved from the combinational part fragments of a sequential circuit. The Boolean difference is also represented by the ROBDD.

Linear Distance: A Multi-Tiered Methodology in the Acquisition of Gender Agreement

This research investigates the influence of L1 properties and proficiency level on the acquisition of gender agreement addressing linear distance as a possible cause of errors. French and English- speaking learners of Spanish participated in the study. Subjects were divided into four different groups considering their L1 (French and English) and their proficiency level (intermediate and advanced). Subjects completed three different tasks: an untimed grammaticality judgment task (UGJT), an elicited oral imitation test (EOI), and an eye-tracking experiment. As for linear distance, each experimental item was distributed across three distance conditions: distance number 1 corresponds to an adjacent adjective pattern, distance number 2 separates the adjective using a copula, and distance number 3 included between three and four words interceding before the copula. Our results show no linear distance effect for either the explicit task or the implicit task.

Exogenous IL-6 induces mRNA splice variant MBD2_v2 to promote stemness in TP53 wild-type, African American PCa cells.

African American men (AAM) are at higher risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer (PCa) and are at higher risk of dying from the disease compared to European American men (EAM). We sought to better understand PCa molecular diversity that may be underlying these disparities. We performed RNA‐sequencing analysis on high‐grade PCa to identify genes showing differential tumor versus noncancer adjacent tissue expression patterns unique to AAM or EAM. We observed that interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) was upregulated in the nonmalignant adjacent tissue in AAM, but in EAM IL‐6 expression was higher in PCa tissue. Enrichment analysis identified that genes linked to the function of TP53 were overrepresented and downregulated in PCa tissue from AAM. These RNA‐sequencing results informed our subsequent investigation of a diverse PCa cell line panel. We observed that PCa cell lines that are TP53 wild‐type, which includes cell lines derived from AAM (MDA‐PCa‐2b and RC77T), did not express detectable IL‐6 mRNA. IL‐6 treatment of these cells downregulated wild‐type TP53 protein and induced mRNA and protein expression of the epigenetic reader methyl CpG binding domain protein 2 (MBD2), specifically the alternative mRNA splicing variant MBD2_v2. Further investigation validated that upregulation of this short isoform promotes self‐renewal and expansion of PCa cancer stem‐like cells (CSCs). In conclusion, this report contributes to characterizing gene expression patterns in high‐grade PCa and adjacent noncancer tissues from EAM and AAM. The results we describe here advance what is known about the biology associated with PCa race disparities and the molecular signaling of CSCs.

Linear Distance: A Multi-Tiered Methodology in the Acquisition of Gender Agreement

This research investigates the influence of L1 properties and proficiency level on the acquisition of gender agreement addressing linear distance as a possible cause of errors. French and English- speaking learners of Spanish participated in the study. Subjects were divided into four different groups considering their L1 (French and English) and their proficiency level (intermediate and advanced). Subjects completed three different tasks: an untimed grammaticality judgment task (UGJT), an elicited oral imitation test (EOI), and an eye-tracking experiment. As for linear distance, each experimental item was distributed across three distance conditions: distance number 1 corresponds to an adjacent adjective pattern, distance number 2 separates the adjective using a copula, and distance number 3 included between three and four words interceding before the copula. Our results show no linear distance effect for either the explicit task or the implicit task.

Fuzzy usage pattern in customizing public transport fleet and its maintenance options

In this paper we study a two-dimensional maintenance contract for a fleet of public transport, such as buses, shuttle etc. The buses are sold with a two-dimensional warranty. The warranty and the maintenance contract are characterized by two parameters – age and usage – which define a two-dimensional region. However, we use one dimensional approach to model these age and usage of the buses. The under-laying maintenance service contracts is the one which offers policy limit cost to protect a service provider (an agent) from over claim and to pursue the owner to do maintenance under specified cost in house. This in turn gives benefit for both the owner of the buses and the agent of service contract. The decision problem for an agent is to determine the optimal price for each option offered, and for the owner is to select the best contract option. We use a Nash game theory formulation in order to obtain a win-win solution – i.e. the optimal price for the agent and the optimal option for the owner. We further assume that there will be three different usage pattern of the buses, i.e. low, medium, and high pattern of the usage rate. In many situations it is often that we face a blur boundary between the adjacent patterns. In this paper we look for the optimal price for the agent and the optimal option for the owner, which minimizes the expected total cost while considering the fuzziness of the usage rate pattern.

Characterizing queries in cross-device OPAC search: a large-scale log study

PurposeThe study focused on online public access catalog (OPAC) users’ cross-device search behavior. The purpose of this paper is to understand the characteristics of cross-device OPAC searches, and to identify query reformulation (QR) patterns during device transitions.Design/methodology/approachThe transaction log from a university library, spanning six months, was used to conduct the quantitative analysis. The query vocabulary richness, which refers to the average number of unique words each query contains in a search session, can evaluate query diversity, and contribute to the analysis of QR.FindingsThe results show that PC-PC transition is the most important pattern of device transition. The time interval of device transition was different to the time interval of transitions in web searches. Short device transitions mainly occurred in daytime, and the number of transitions that occurred in less than one minute was higher than on the web. Searches for Industry and Technology triggered the most device transitions, and the users tended to choose the same search field. In addition, the authors made a detailed analysis of the reasons for same-type device transitions and different-type device transitions. Furthermore, the authors focused on the characteristics of adjacent QR patterns. The authors not only refined the concept of cross-device to include the same-type device transition, but also summarized the characteristics of the cross-device QR patterns, which can be used to predict post-switch queries.Originality/valueThis study extends research into cross-device interaction and cross-device search to the domain of digital library research. The authors also introduced QR perspective on cross-device interaction on OPAC.

Sidelobe Exploitation for Beam Discovery in Line of Sight Millimeter Wave Systems

Exhaustive search methods for optimum beamforming directions result in high computational complexity and increased time delays. Hence, this letter presents a novel initial beam discovery technique for codebook-based designs which leverages the presence of sidelobes as adjacent patterns to the main beamforming lobes. Namely, once a signal is detected in the direction of a sidelobe during beam scanning, the main lobe is shifted toward that direction and the scan is terminated. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme gives significant performance gains versus existing methods.

Quick and robust meshless analysis of cracked body with coupled generalized hyperbolic thermo-elasticity formulation

In this article, the MLPG method is applied to the generalized linear coupled thermoelectricity equations. Lord–Shulman modification with a relaxation time parameter is used in the hyperbolic heat conduction equations. A new linear test function which is zero on the boundaries of local test domains is introduced. The test function and its partial derivatives are determined by an exponential RBF approximation method. The approximation of test function and main variables are similar. For the construction of shape functions, neighbors of every point are determined based on the definition of the closest adjacent point pattern. Consequently, test function space becomes independent of trial function space. Direct interpolation method and penalty parameter are used to impose essential boundary conditions. The selection of appropriate parameters are demonstrated in two numerical examples. The small number of used points is the advantage of this method over the FEM that is shown in several examples. The accuracy of results is compared between the meshless method and different analytical and FE solutions. The effect of the relaxation time on SIF under thermal shock is discussed in a separate example. The comparison of meshless results with various examples shows that employed method is accurate and reliable.

Exploration of blood flow patterns in cerebral aneurysms during the cardiac cycle

This paper presents a method for clustering time-dependent blood flow data, represented by path lines, in cerebral aneurysms using a reliable similarity measure combined with a clustering technique. Such aneurysms bear the risk of rupture, whereas their treatment also carries considerable risks for the patient. Medical researchers emphasize the importance of investigating aberrant blood flow patterns for the patient-specific rupture risk assessment and treatment analysis. Therefore, occurring flow patterns are manually extracted and classified according to predefined criteria. The manual extraction is time-consuming for larger studies and affected by visual clutter, which complicates the subsequent classification of flow patterns. In contrast, our method allows an automatic and reliable clustering of intra-aneurysmal flow patterns that facilitates their classification. We introduce a similarity measure that groups spatio-temporally adjacent flow patterns. We combine our similarity measure with a commonly used clustering technique and applied it to five representative datasets. The clustering results are presented by 2D and 3D visualizations and were qualitatively compared and evaluated by four domain experts. Moreover, we qualitatively evaluated our similarity measure.

Fabrication of a Textile-Based Wearable Blood Leakage Sensor Using Screen-Offset Printing.

We fabricate a wearable blood leakage sensor on a cotton textile by combining two newly developed techniques. First, we employ a screen-offset printing technique that avoids blurring, short circuiting between adjacent conductive patterns, and electrode fracturing to form an interdigitated electrode structure for the sensor on a textile. Furthermore, we develop a scheme to distinguish blood from other substances by utilizing the specific dielectric dispersion of blood observed in the sub-megahertz frequency range. The sensor can detect blood volumes as low as 15 μL, which is significantly lower than those of commercially available products (which can detect approximately 1 mL of blood) and comparable to a recently reported value of approximately 10 μL. In this study, we merge two technologies to develop a more practical skin-friendly sensor that can be applied for safe, stress-free blood leakage monitoring during hemodialysis.

Comparison of feature extraction techniques for classification of hardwood species

The texture of an image plays an important role in identification and classification of images. The hardwood species of an image contains four key elements namely: vessels (popularly known as pores in cross-section view), fibres, parenchyma's and rays, useful in its identification and classification. Further, the arrangements of all these elements posses texture rich features. Thus, in this work investigation of existing texture feature extraction techniques for the classification of hardwood species have been done. The texture features are extracted from greyscale images of hardwood species to reduce the computational complexity. Further, linear support vector machine (SVM), radial basis function (RBF) kernel SVM, random forest (RF) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) have been employed as classifiers to investigate the efficacy of the texture feature extraction techniques. The classification accuracy of the existing texture descriptors has been compared. Further, principal component analysis (PCA) and minimal-redundancy-maximal-relevance (mRMR) feature selection method is employed to select the best subset of feature vector data. The PCA reduced feature vector data of co-occurrence of adjacent local binary pattern (CoALBP24) texture feature extraction technique has attained maximum classification accuracy of 96.33 ± 1.14% with the help of LDA classifier.