Dengue Vectors and their Spatial Distribution

PubMed Central

Higa, Yukiko

2011-01-01

The distribution of dengue vectors, Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus, is affected by climatic factors. In addition, since their life cycles are well adapted to the human environment, environmental changes resulting from human activity such as urbanization exert a great impact on vector distribution. The different responses of Ae. aegypti and Ae albopictus to various environments result in a difference in spatial distribution along north-south and urban-rural gradients, and between the indoors and outdoors. In the north-south gradient, climate associated with survival is an important factor in spatial distribution. In the urban-rural gradient, different distribution reflects a difference in adult niches and is modified by geographic and human factors. The direct response of the two species to the environment around houses is related to different spatial distribution indoors and outdoors. Dengue viruses circulate mainly between human and vector mosquitoes, and the vector presence is a limiting factor of transmission. Therefore, spatial distribution of dengue vectors is a significant concern in the epidemiology of the disease. Current technologies such as GIS, satellite imagery and statistical models allow researchers to predict the spatial distribution of vectors in the changing environment. Although it is difficult to confirm the actual effect of environmental and climate changes on vector abundance and vector-borne diseases, environmental changes caused by humans and human behavioral changes due to climate change can be expected to exert an impact on dengue vectors. Longitudinal monitoring of dengue vectors and viruses is therefore necessary. PMID:22500133

Mosquito communities with trap height and urban-rural gradient in Adelaide, South Australia: implications for disease vector surveillance.

PubMed

Johnston, Emily; Weinstein, Phillip; Slaney, David; Flies, Andrew S; Fricker, Stephen; Williams, Craig

2014-06-01

Understanding the factors influencing mosquito distribution is important for effective surveillance and control of nuisance and disease vector mosquitoes. The goal of this study was to determine how trap height and distance to the city center influenced the abundance and species of mosquitoes collected in Adelaide, South Australia. Mosquito communities were sampled at two heights (<2 m and ~10 m) along an urban-rural gradient. A total of 5,133 mosquitoes was identified over 176 trap nights. Aedes notoscriptus, Ae. vigilax, and Culex molestus were all more abundant in lower traps while Cx. quinquefasciatus (an ornithophilic species) was found to be more abundant in high traps. Distance to city center correlated strongly with the abundance of Ae. vigilax, Ae. camptorhynchus, Cx. globocoxitus, and Cx. molestus, all of which were most common at the sites farthest from the city and closest to the saltmarsh. Overall, the important disease vectors in South Australia (Ae. vigilax, Ae. camptorhynchus, Ae. notoscriptus, and Cx. annulirostris) were more abundant in low traps farthest from the city and closest to the saltmarsh. The current mosquito surveillance practice of setting traps within two meters of the ground is effective for sampling populations of the important disease vector species in South Australia. © 2014 The Society for Vector Ecology.

New methods for interpretation of magnetic vector and gradient tensor data II: application to the Mount Leyshon anomaly, Queensland, Australia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clark, David A.

2013-04-01

Acquisition of magnetic gradient tensor data is anticipated to become routine in the near future. In the meantime, modern ultrahigh resolution conventional magnetic data can be used, with certain important caveats, to calculate magnetic vector components and gradient tensor elements from total magnetic intensity (TMI) or TMI gradient surveys. An accompanying paper presented new methods for inverting gradient tensor data to obtain source parameters for several elementary, but useful, models. These include point dipole (sphere), vertical line of dipoles (narrow vertical pipe), line of dipoles (horizontal cylinder), thin dipping sheet, and contact models. A key simplification is the use of eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors of the tensor. The normalised source strength (NSS), calculated from the eigenvalues, is a particularly useful rotational invariant that peaks directly over 3D compact sources, 2D compact sources, thin sheets, and contacts, independent of magnetisation direction. Source locations can be inverted directly from the NSS and its vector gradient. Some of these new methods have been applied to analysis of the magnetic signature of the Early Permian Mount Leyshon gold-mineralised system, Queensland. The Mount Leyshon magnetic anomaly is a prominent TMI low that is produced by rock units with strong reversed remanence acquired during the Late Palaeozoic Reverse Superchron. The inferred magnetic moment for the source zone of the Mount Leyshon magnetic anomaly is ~1010Am2. Its direction is consistent with petrophysical measurements. Given estimated magnetisation from samples and geological information, this suggests a volume of ~1.5km×1.5km×2km (vertical). The inferred depth of the centre of magnetisation is ~900m below surface, suggesting that the depth extent of the magnetic zone is ~1800m. Some of the deeper, undrilled portion of the magnetic zone could be a mafic intrusion similar to the nearby coeval Fenian Diorite, representing part of the

Detection of ferromagnetic target based on mobile magnetic gradient tensor system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gang, Y. I. N.; Yingtang, Zhang; Zhining, Li; Hongbo, Fan; Guoquan, Ren

2016-03-01

Attitude change of mobile magnetic gradient tensor system critically affects the precision of gradient measurements, thereby increasing ambiguity in target detection. This paper presents a rotational invariant-based method for locating and identifying ferromagnetic targets. Firstly, unit magnetic moment vector was derived based on the geometrical invariant, such that the intermediate eigenvector of the magnetic gradient tensor is perpendicular to the magnetic moment vector and the source-sensor displacement vector. Secondly, unit source-sensor displacement vector was derived based on the characteristic that the angle between magnetic moment vector and source-sensor displacement is a rotational invariant. By introducing a displacement vector between two measurement points, the magnetic moment vector and the source-sensor displacement vector were theoretically derived. To resolve the problem of measurement noises existing in the realistic detection applications, linear equations were formulated using invariants corresponding to several distinct measurement points and least square solution of magnetic moment vector and source-sensor displacement vector were obtained. Results of simulation and principal verification experiment showed the correctness of the analytical method, along with the practicability of the least square method.

A kinetic flux vector splitting scheme for shallow water equations incorporating variable bottom topography and horizontal temperature gradients.

PubMed

Saleem, M Rehan; Ashraf, Waqas; Zia, Saqib; Ali, Ishtiaq; Qamar, Shamsul

2018-01-01

This paper is concerned with the derivation of a well-balanced kinetic scheme to approximate a shallow flow model incorporating non-flat bottom topography and horizontal temperature gradients. The considered model equations, also called as Ripa system, are the non-homogeneous shallow water equations considering temperature gradients and non-uniform bottom topography. Due to the presence of temperature gradient terms, the steady state at rest is of primary interest from the physical point of view. However, capturing of this steady state is a challenging task for the applied numerical methods. The proposed well-balanced kinetic flux vector splitting (KFVS) scheme is non-oscillatory and second order accurate. The second order accuracy of the scheme is obtained by considering a MUSCL-type initial reconstruction and Runge-Kutta time stepping method. The scheme is applied to solve the model equations in one and two space dimensions. Several numerical case studies are carried out to validate the proposed numerical algorithm. The numerical results obtained are compared with those of staggered central NT scheme. The results obtained are also in good agreement with the recently published results in the literature, verifying the potential, efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the suggested numerical scheme.

Vector 33: A reduce program for vector algebra and calculus in orthogonal curvilinear coordinates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harper, David

1989-06-01

This paper describes a package with enables REDUCE 3.3 to perform algebra and calculus operations upon vectors. Basic algebraic operations between vectors and between scalars and vectors are provided, including scalar (dot) product and vector (cross) product. The vector differential operators curl, divergence, gradient and Laplacian are also defined, and are valid in any orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system. The package is written in RLISP to allow algebra and calculus to be performed using notation identical to that for operations. Scalars and vectors can be mixed quite freely in the same expression. The package will be of interest to mathematicians, engineers and scientists who need to perform vector calculations in orthogonal curvilinear coordinates.

Symbolic computer vector analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stoutemyer, D. R.

1977-01-01

A MACSYMA program is described which performs symbolic vector algebra and vector calculus. The program can combine and simplify symbolic expressions including dot products and cross products, together with the gradient, divergence, curl, and Laplacian operators. The distribution of these operators over sums or products is under user control, as are various other expansions, including expansion into components in any specific orthogonal coordinate system. There is also a capability for deriving the scalar or vector potential of a vector field. Examples include derivation of the partial differential equations describing fluid flow and magnetohydrodynamics, for 12 different classic orthogonal curvilinear coordinate systems.

A kinetic flux vector splitting scheme for shallow water equations incorporating variable bottom topography and horizontal temperature gradients

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

This paper is concerned with the derivation of a well-balanced kinetic scheme to approximate a shallow flow model incorporating non-flat bottom topography and horizontal temperature gradients. The considered model equations, also called as Ripa system, are the non-homogeneous shallow water equations considering temperature gradients and non-uniform bottom topography. Due to the presence of temperature gradient terms, the steady state at rest is of primary interest from the physical point of view. However, capturing of this steady state is a challenging task for the applied numerical methods. The proposed well-balanced kinetic flux vector splitting (KFVS) scheme is non-oscillatory and second order accurate. The second order accuracy of the scheme is obtained by considering a MUSCL-type initial reconstruction and Runge-Kutta time stepping method. The scheme is applied to solve the model equations in one and two space dimensions. Several numerical case studies are carried out to validate the proposed numerical algorithm. The numerical results obtained are compared with those of staggered central NT scheme. The results obtained are also in good agreement with the recently published results in the literature, verifying the potential, efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the suggested numerical scheme. PMID:29851978

Detection of License Plate using Sliding Window, Histogram of Oriented Gradient, and Support Vector Machines Method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Astawa, INGA; Gusti Ngurah Bagus Caturbawa, I.; Made Sajayasa, I.; Dwi Suta Atmaja, I. Made Ari

2018-01-01

The license plate recognition usually used as part of system such as parking system. License plate detection considered as the most important step in the license plate recognition system. We propose methods that can be used to detect the vehicle plate on mobile phone. In this paper, we used Sliding Window, Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG), and Support Vector Machines (SVM) method to license plate detection so it will increase the detection level even though the image is not in a good quality. The image proceed by Sliding Window method in order to find plate position. Feature extraction in every window movement had been done by HOG and SVM method. Good result had shown in this research, which is 96% of accuracy.

Full magnetic gradient tensor from triaxial aeromagnetic gradient measurements: Calculation and application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luo, Yao; Wu, Mei-Ping; Wang, Ping; Duan, Shu-Ling; Liu, Hao-Jun; Wang, Jin-Long; An, Zhan-Feng

2015-09-01

The full magnetic gradient tensor (MGT) refers to the spatial change rate of the three field components of the geomagnetic field vector along three mutually orthogonal axes. The tensor is of use to geological mapping, resources exploration, magnetic navigation, and others. However, it is very difficult to measure the full magnetic tensor gradient using existing engineering technology. We present a method to use triaxial aeromagnetic gradient measurements for deriving the full MGT. The method uses the triaxial gradient data and makes full use of the variation of the magnetic anomaly modulus in three dimensions to obtain a self-consistent magnetic tensor gradient. Numerical simulations show that the full MGT data obtained with the proposed method are of high precision and satisfy the requirements of data processing. We selected triaxial aeromagnetic gradient data from the Hebei Province for calculating the full MGT. Data processing shows that using triaxial tensor gradient data allows to take advantage of the spatial rate of change of the total field in three dimensions and suppresses part of the independent noise in the aeromagnetic gradient. The calculated tensor components have improved resolution, and the transformed full tensor gradient satisfies the requirement of geological mapping and interpretation.

Estimating locations and total magnetization vectors of compact magnetic sources from scalar, vector, or tensor magnetic measurements through combined Helbig and Euler analysis

USGS Publications Warehouse

Phillips, J.D.; Nabighian, M.N.; Smith, D.V.; Li, Y.

2007-01-01

The Helbig method for estimating total magnetization directions of compact sources from magnetic vector components is extended so that tensor magnetic gradient components can be used instead. Depths of the compact sources can be estimated using the Euler equation, and their dipole moment magnitudes can be estimated using a least squares fit to the vector component or tensor gradient component data. ?? 2007 Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

Primer vector theory and applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jezewski, D. J.

1975-01-01

A method developed to compute two-body, optimal, N-impulse trajectories was presented. The necessary conditions established define the gradient structure of the primer vector and its derivative for any set of boundary conditions and any number of impulses. Inequality constraints, a conjugate gradient iterator technique, and the use of a penalty function were also discussed.

Vector competence of northern and southern European Culex pipiens pipiens mosquitoes for West Nile virus across a gradient of temperatures.

PubMed

Vogels, C B F; Göertz, G P; Pijlman, G P; Koenraadt, C J M

2017-12-01

In Europe, West Nile virus (WNV) outbreaks have been limited to southern and central European countries. However, competent mosquito vectors and susceptible bird hosts are present in northern Europe. Differences in temperature and vector competence of mosquito populations may explain the absence of WNV outbreaks in northern Europe. The aim of the present study was to directly compare vector competence of northern and southern European Culex pipiens (Cx. p.) pipiens mosquitoes for WNV across a gradient of temperatures. WNV infection and transmission rates were determined for two Cx. p. pipiens populations originating from The Netherlands and Italy, respectively. Mosquitoes were orally exposed by providing an infectious bloodmeal, or by injecting WNV (lineage 2) in the thorax, followed by 14-day incubation at 18, 23, or 28 °C. No differences in infection or transmission rates were found between the Cx. p. pipiens populations with both infection methods, but WNV transmission rates were significantly higher at temperatures above 18 °C. The absence of WNV outbreaks in northern Europe cannot be explained by differences in vector competence between Cx. p. pipiens populations originating from northern and southern Europe. This study suggests that low temperature is a key limiting factor for WNV transmission. © 2017 The Authors. Medical and Veterinary Entomology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Entomological Society.

Studies on deflection area vectors of QRS and T and ventricular gradient in right ventricular hypertrophy.

PubMed

Kawaguchi, Y

1985-04-01

QRS deflection area vector (Aqrs), T deflection area vector (At) and ventricular gradient (G) in right ventricular hypertrophy were studied in 53 subjects divided on the basis of cardiac catheterization data into four subgroups; normal controls, mild MS group, right ventricular pressure overload group and right ventricular volume overload group. Aqrs, At and G of the four subgroups were calculated using a microcomputer and compared. Aqrs in right ventricular pressure overload group and volume overload group was shifted to the right and slightly anteriorly from that in normal control group. At in right ventricular pressure overload group and volume overload group was shifted slightly upwards and significantly posteriorly from that in the normal control and mild MS groups. G in right ventricular pressure overload group and volume overload group was shifted to the right and significantly posteriorly from that in normal control and mild MS groups. Using multivariative analysis, we developed criteria for diagnosing right ventricular hypertrophy with At: 0.059At(Z) - 0.0145 [At] - 0.2608 less than or equal to 0. Application of this criteria achieved 82.4% (28 of 34) sensitivity in the patients with right ventricular hypertrophy and 90.9% (10 of 11) specificity in the normal control subjects.

Manipulating the Gradient

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaze, Eric C.

2005-01-01

We introduce a cooperative learning, group lab for a Calculus III course to facilitate comprehension of the gradient vector and directional derivative concepts. The lab is a hands-on experience allowing students to manipulate a tangent plane and empirically measure the effect of partial derivatives on the direction of optimal ascent. (Contains 7…

Automatic lesion boundary detection in dermoscopy images using gradient vector flow snakes

PubMed Central

Erkol, Bulent; Moss, Randy H.; Stanley, R. Joe; Stoecker, William V.; Hvatum, Erik

2011-01-01

Background Malignant melanoma has a good prognosis if treated early. Dermoscopy images of pigmented lesions are most commonly taken at × 10 magnification under lighting at a low angle of incidence while the skin is immersed in oil under a glass plate. Accurate skin lesion segmentation from the background skin is important because some of the features anticipated to be used for diagnosis deal with shape of the lesion and others deal with the color of the lesion compared with the color of the surrounding skin. Methods In this research, gradient vector flow (GVF) snakes are investigated to find the border of skin lesions in dermoscopy images. An automatic initialization method is introduced to make the skin lesion border determination process fully automated. Results Skin lesion segmentation results are presented for 70 benign and 30 melanoma skin lesion images for the GVF-based method and a color histogram analysis technique. The average errors obtained by the GVF-based method are lower for both the benign and melanoma image sets than for the color histogram analysis technique based on comparison with manually segmented lesions determined by a dermatologist. Conclusions The experimental results for the GVF-based method demonstrate promise as an automated technique for skin lesion segmentation in dermoscopy images. PMID:15691255

Magnetic potential, vector and gradient tensor fields of a tesseroid in a geocentric spherical coordinate system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Jinsong; Chen, Chao; Lesur, Vincent; Lane, Richard; Wang, Huilin

2015-06-01

We examined the mathematical and computational aspects of the magnetic potential, vector and gradient tensor fields of a tesseroid in a geocentric spherical coordinate system (SCS). This work is relevant for 3-D modelling that is performed with lithospheric vertical scales and global, continent or large regional horizontal scales. The curvature of the Earth is significant at these scales and hence, a SCS is more appropriate than the usual Cartesian coordinate system (CCS). The 3-D arrays of spherical prisms (SP; `tesseroids') can be used to model the response of volumes with variable magnetic properties. Analytical solutions do not exist for these model elements and numerical or mixed numerical and analytical solutions must be employed. We compared various methods for calculating the response in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. The methods were (1) the spherical coordinate magnetic dipole method (MD), (2) variants of the 3-D Gauss-Legendre quadrature integration method (3-D GLQI) with (i) different numbers of nodes in each of the three directions, and (ii) models where we subdivided each SP into a number of smaller tesseroid volume elements, (3) a procedure that we term revised Gauss-Legendre quadrature integration (3-D RGLQI) where the magnetization direction which is constant in a SCS is assumed to be constant in a CCS and equal to the direction at the geometric centre of each tesseroid, (4) the Taylor's series expansion method (TSE) and (5) the rectangular prism method (RP). In any realistic application, both the accuracy and the computational efficiency factors must be considered to determine the optimum approach to employ. In all instances, accuracy improves with increasing distance from the source. It is higher in the percentage terms for potential than the vector or tensor response. The tensor errors are the largest, but they decrease more quickly with distance from the source. In our comparisons of relative computational efficiency, we found

Gradients estimation from random points with volumetric tensor in turbulence

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watanabe, Tomoaki; Nagata, Koji

2017-12-01

We present an estimation method of fully-resolved/coarse-grained gradients from randomly distributed points in turbulence. The method is based on a linear approximation of spatial gradients expressed with the volumetric tensor, which is a 3 × 3 matrix determined by a geometric distribution of the points. The coarse grained gradient can be considered as a low pass filtered gradient, whose cutoff is estimated with the eigenvalues of the volumetric tensor. The present method, the volumetric tensor approximation, is tested for velocity and passive scalar gradients in incompressible planar jet and mixing layer. Comparison with a finite difference approximation on a Cartesian grid shows that the volumetric tensor approximation computes the coarse grained gradients fairly well at a moderate computational cost under various conditions of spatial distributions of points. We also show that imposing the solenoidal condition improves the accuracy of the present method for solenoidal vectors, such as a velocity vector in incompressible flows, especially when the number of the points is not large. The volumetric tensor approximation with 4 points poorly estimates the gradient because of anisotropic distribution of the points. Increasing the number of points from 4 significantly improves the accuracy. Although the coarse grained gradient changes with the cutoff length, the volumetric tensor approximation yields the coarse grained gradient whose magnitude is close to the one obtained by the finite difference. We also show that the velocity gradient estimated with the present method well captures the turbulence characteristics such as local flow topology, amplification of enstrophy and strain, and energy transfer across scales.

New Methods For Interpretation Of Magnetic Gradient Tensor Data Using Eigenalysis And The Normalized Source Strength

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clark, D.

2012-12-01

In the future, acquisition of magnetic gradient tensor data is likely to become routine. New methods developed for analysis of magnetic gradient tensor data can also be applied to high quality conventional TMI surveys that have been processed using Fourier filtering techniques, or otherwise, to calculate magnetic vector and tensor components. This approach is, in fact, the only practical way at present to analyze vector component data, as measurements of vector components are seriously afflicted by motion noise, which is not as serious a problem for gradient components. In many circumstances, an optimal approach to extracting maximum information from magnetic surveys would be to combine analysis of measured gradient tensor data with vector components calculated from TMI measurements. New methods for inverting gradient tensor surveys to obtain source parameters have been developed for a number of elementary, but useful, models. These include point dipole (sphere), vertical line of dipoles (narrow vertical pipe), line of dipoles (horizontal cylinder), thin dipping sheet, horizontal line current and contact models. A key simplification is the use of eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors of the tensor. The normalized source strength (NSS), calculated from the eigenvalues, is a particularly useful rotational invariant that peaks directly over 3D compact sources, 2D compact sources, thin sheets and contacts, and is independent of magnetization direction for these sources (and only very weakly dependent on magnetization direction in general). In combination the NSS and its vector gradient enable estimation of the Euler structural index, thereby constraining source geometry, and determine source locations uniquely. NSS analysis can be extended to other useful models, such as vertical pipes, by calculating eigenvalues of the vertical derivative of the gradient tensor. Once source locations are determined, information of source magnetizations can be obtained by simple

A generalized nonlocal vector calculus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alali, Bacim; Liu, Kuo; Gunzburger, Max

2015-10-01

A nonlocal vector calculus was introduced in Du et al. (Math Model Meth Appl Sci 23:493-540, 2013) that has proved useful for the analysis of the peridynamics model of nonlocal mechanics and nonlocal diffusion models. A formulation is developed that provides a more general setting for the nonlocal vector calculus that is independent of particular nonlocal models. It is shown that general nonlocal calculus operators are integral operators with specific integral kernels. General nonlocal calculus properties are developed, including nonlocal integration by parts formula and Green's identities. The nonlocal vector calculus introduced in Du et al. (Math Model Meth Appl Sci 23:493-540, 2013) is shown to be recoverable from the general formulation as a special example. This special nonlocal vector calculus is used to reformulate the peridynamics equation of motion in terms of the nonlocal gradient operator and its adjoint. A new example of nonlocal vector calculus operators is introduced, which shows the potential use of the general formulation for general nonlocal models.

Minimizing inner product data dependencies in conjugate gradient iteration

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vanrosendale, J.

1983-01-01

The amount of concurrency available in conjugate gradient iteration is limited by the summations required in the inner product computations. The inner product of two vectors of length N requires time c log(N), if N or more processors are available. This paper describes an algebraic restructuring of the conjugate gradient algorithm which minimizes data dependencies due to inner product calculations. After an initial start up, the new algorithm can perform a conjugate gradient iteration in time c*log(log(N)).

Radar observations of density gradients, electric fields, and plasma irregularities near polar cap patches in the context of the gradient-drift instability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lamarche, Leslie J.; Makarevich, Roman A.

2017-03-01

We present observations of plasma density gradients, electric fields, and small-scale plasma irregularities near a polar cap patch made by the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network radar at Rankin Inlet (RKN) and the northern face of Resolute Bay Incoherent Scatter Radar (RISR-N). RKN echo power and occurrence are analyzed in the context of gradient-drift instability (GDI) theory, with a particular focus on the previously uninvestigated 2-D dependencies on wave propagation, electric field, and gradient vectors, with the latter two quantities evaluated directly from RISR-N measurements. It is shown that higher gradient and electric field components along the wave vector generally lead to the higher observed echo occurrence, which is consistent with the expected higher GDI growth rate, but the relationship with echo power is far less straightforward. The RKN echo power increases monotonically as the predicted linear growth rate approaches zero from negative values but does not continue this trend into positive growth rate values, in contrast with GDI predictions. The observed greater consistency of echo occurrence with GDI predictions suggests that GDI operating in the linear regime can control basic plasma structuring, but measured echo strength may be affected by other processes and factors, such as multistep or nonlinear processes or a shear-driven instability.

Multiclass Reduced-Set Support Vector Machines

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tang, Benyang; Mazzoni, Dominic

2006-01-01

There are well-established methods for reducing the number of support vectors in a trained binary support vector machine, often with minimal impact on accuracy. We show how reduced-set methods can be applied to multiclass SVMs made up of several binary SVMs, with significantly better results than reducing each binary SVM independently. Our approach is based on Burges' approach that constructs each reduced-set vector as the pre-image of a vector in kernel space, but we extend this by recomputing the SVM weights and bias optimally using the original SVM objective function. This leads to greater accuracy for a binary reduced-set SVM, and also allows vectors to be 'shared' between multiple binary SVMs for greater multiclass accuracy with fewer reduced-set vectors. We also propose computing pre-images using differential evolution, which we have found to be more robust than gradient descent alone. We show experimental results on a variety of problems and find that this new approach is consistently better than previous multiclass reduced-set methods, sometimes with a dramatic difference.

Gradient-based adaptation of general gaussian kernels.

PubMed

Glasmachers, Tobias; Igel, Christian

2005-10-01

Gradient-based optimizing of gaussian kernel functions is considered. The gradient for the adaptation of scaling and rotation of the input space is computed to achieve invariance against linear transformations. This is done by using the exponential map as a parameterization of the kernel parameter manifold. By restricting the optimization to a constant trace subspace, the kernel size can be controlled. This is, for example, useful to prevent overfitting when minimizing radius-margin generalization performance measures. The concepts are demonstrated by training hard margin support vector machines on toy data.

Production of SV40-derived vectors.

PubMed

Strayer, David S; Mitchell, Christine; Maier, Dawn A; Nichols, Carmen N

2010-06-01

Recombinant simian virus 40 (rSV40)-derived vectors are particularly useful for gene delivery to bone marrow progenitor cells and their differentiated derivatives, certain types of epithelial cells (e.g., hepatocytes), and central nervous system neurons and microglia. They integrate rapidly into cellular DNA to provide long-term gene expression in vitro and in vivo in both resting and dividing cells. Here we describe a protocol for production and purification of these vectors. These procedures require only packaging cells (e.g., COS-7) and circular vector genome DNA. Amplification involves repeated infection of packaging cells with vector produced by transfection. Cotransfection is not required in any step. Viruses are purified by centrifugation using discontinuous sucrose or cesium chloride (CsCl) gradients and resulting vectors are replication-incompetent and contain no detectable wild-type SV40 revertants. These approaches are simple, give reproducible results, and may be used to generate vectors that are deleted only for large T antigen (Tag), or for all SV40-coding sequences capable of carrying up to 5 kb of foreign DNA. These vectors are best applied to long-term expression of proteins normally encoded by mammalian cells or by viruses that infect mammalian cells, or of untranslated RNAs (e.g., RNA interference). The preparative approaches described facilitate application of these vectors and allow almost any laboratory to exploit their strengths for diverse gene delivery applications.

Efficient boundary hunting via vector quantization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Diamantini, Claudia; Panti, Maurizio

2001-03-01

A great amount of information about a classification problem is contained in those instances falling near the decision boundary. This intuition dates back to the earliest studies in pattern recognition, and in the more recent adaptive approaches to the so called boundary hunting, such as the work of Aha et alii on Instance Based Learning and the work of Vapnik et alii on Support Vector Machines. The last work is of particular interest, since theoretical and experimental results ensure the accuracy of boundary reconstruction. However, its optimization approach has heavy computational and memory requirements, which limits its application on huge amounts of data. In the paper we describe an alternative approach to boundary hunting based on adaptive labeled quantization architectures. The adaptation is performed by a stochastic gradient algorithm for the minimization of the error probability. Error probability minimization guarantees the accurate approximation of the optimal decision boundary, while the use of a stochastic gradient algorithm defines an efficient method to reach such approximation. In the paper comparisons to Support Vector Machines are considered.

Stable solutions of inflation driven by vector fields

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Emami, Razieh; Mukohyama, Shinji; Namba, Ryo; Zhang, Ying-li

2017-03-01

Many models of inflation driven by vector fields alone have been known to be plagued by pathological behaviors, namely ghost and/or gradient instabilities. In this work, we seek a new class of vector-driven inflationary models that evade all of the mentioned instabilities. We build our analysis on the Generalized Proca Theory with an extension to three vector fields to realize isotropic expansion. We obtain the conditions required for quasi de-Sitter solutions to be an attractor analogous to the standard slow-roll one and those for their stability at the level of linearized perturbations. Identifying the remedy to the existing unstable models, we provide a simple example and explicitly show its stability. This significantly broadens our knowledge on vector inflationary scenarios, reviving potential phenomenological interests for this class of models.

Fractional vector calculus for fractional advection dispersion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meerschaert, Mark M.; Mortensen, Jeff; Wheatcraft, Stephen W.

2006-07-01

We develop the basic tools of fractional vector calculus including a fractional derivative version of the gradient, divergence, and curl, and a fractional divergence theorem and Stokes theorem. These basic tools are then applied to provide a physical explanation for the fractional advection-dispersion equation for flow in heterogeneous porous media.

Toward lattice fractional vector calculus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tarasov, Vasily E.

2014-09-01

An analog of fractional vector calculus for physical lattice models is suggested. We use an approach based on the models of three-dimensional lattices with long-range inter-particle interactions. The lattice analogs of fractional partial derivatives are represented by kernels of lattice long-range interactions, where the Fourier series transformations of these kernels have a power-law form with respect to wave vector components. In the continuum limit, these lattice partial derivatives give derivatives of non-integer order with respect to coordinates. In the three-dimensional description of the non-local continuum, the fractional differential operators have the form of fractional partial derivatives of the Riesz type. As examples of the applications of the suggested lattice fractional vector calculus, we give lattice models with long-range interactions for the fractional Maxwell equations of non-local continuous media and for the fractional generalization of the Mindlin and Aifantis continuum models of gradient elasticity.

Quantitative structure-retention relationship models for the prediction of the reversed-phase HPLC gradient retention based on the heuristic method and support vector machine.

PubMed

Du, Hongying; Wang, Jie; Yao, Xiaojun; Hu, Zhide

2009-01-01

The heuristic method (HM) and support vector machine (SVM) were used to construct quantitative structure-retention relationship models by a series of compounds to predict the gradient retention times of reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in three different columns. The aims of this investigation were to predict the retention times of multifarious compounds, to find the main properties of the three columns, and to indicate the theory of separation procedures. In our method, we correlated the retention times of many diverse structural analytes in three columns (Symmetry C18, Chromolith, and SG-MIX) with their representative molecular descriptors, calculated from the molecular structures alone. HM was used to select the most important molecular descriptors and build linear regression models. Furthermore, non-linear regression models were built using the SVM method; the performance of the SVM models were better than that of the HM models, and the prediction results were in good agreement with the experimental values. This paper could give some insights into the factors that were likely to govern the gradient retention process of the three investigated HPLC columns, which could theoretically supervise the practical experiment.

Gradient-based controllers for timed continuous Petri nets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lefebvre, Dimitri; Leclercq, Edouard; Druaux, Fabrice; Thomas, Philippe

2015-07-01

This paper is about control design for timed continuous Petri nets that are described as piecewise affine systems. In this context, the marking vector is considered as the state space vector, weighted marking of place subsets are defined as the model outputs and the model inputs correspond to multiplicative control actions that slow down the firing rate of some controllable transitions. Structural and functional sensitivity of the outputs with respect to the inputs are discussed in terms of Petri nets. Then, gradient-based controllers (GBC) are developed in order to adapt the control actions of the controllable transitions according to desired trajectories of the outputs.

Vector method for strain estimation in phase-sensitive optical coherence elastography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Matveyev, A. L.; Matveev, L. A.; Sovetsky, A. A.; Gelikonov, G. V.; Moiseev, A. A.; Zaitsev, V. Y.

2018-06-01

A noise-tolerant approach to strain estimation in phase-sensitive optical coherence elastography, robust to decorrelation distortions, is discussed. The method is based on evaluation of interframe phase-variation gradient, but its main feature is that the phase is singled out at the very last step of the gradient estimation. All intermediate steps operate with complex-valued optical coherence tomography (OCT) signals represented as vectors in the complex plane (hence, we call this approach the ‘vector’ method). In comparison with such a popular method as least-square fitting of the phase-difference slope over a selected region (even in the improved variant with amplitude weighting for suppressing small-amplitude noisy pixels), the vector approach demonstrates superior tolerance to both additive noise in the receiving system and speckle-decorrelation caused by tissue straining. Another advantage of the vector approach is that it obviates the usual necessity of error-prone phase unwrapping. Here, special attention is paid to modifications of the vector method that make it especially suitable for processing deformations with significant lateral inhomogeneity, which often occur in real situations. The method’s advantages are demonstrated using both simulated and real OCT scans obtained during reshaping of a collagenous tissue sample irradiated by an IR laser beam producing complex spatially inhomogeneous deformations.

Shadowgraph Study of Gradient Driven Fluctuations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cannell, David; Nikolaenko, Gennady; Giglio, Marzio; Vailati, Alberto; Croccolo, Fabrizio; Meyer, William

2002-01-01

A fluid or fluid mixture, subjected to a vertical temperature and/or concentration gradient in a gravitational field, exhibits greatly enhanced light scattering at small angles. This effect is caused by coupling between the vertical velocity fluctuations due to thermal energy and the vertically varying refractive index. Physically, small upward or downward moving regions will be displaced into fluid having a refractive index different from that of the moving region, thus giving rise to the enhanced scattering. The scattered intensity is predicted to vary with scattering wave vector q, as q(sup -4), for sufficiently large q, but the divergence is quenched by gravity at small q. In the absence of gravity, the long wavelength fluctuations responsible for the enhanced scattering are predicted to grow until limited by the sample dimensions. It is thus of interest to measure the mean-squared amplitude of such fluctuations in the microgravity environment for comparison with existing theory and ground based measurements. The relevant wave vectors are extremely small, making traditional low-angle light scattering difficult or impossible because of stray elastically scattered light generated by optical surfaces. An alternative technique is offered by the shadowgraph method, which is normally used to visualize fluid flows, but which can also serve as a quantitative tool to measure fluctuations. A somewhat novel shadowgraph apparatus and the necessary data analysis methods will be described. The apparatus uses a spatially coherent, but temporally incoherent, light source consisting of a super-luminescent diode coupled to a single-mode optical fiber in order to achieve extremely high spatial resolution, while avoiding effects caused by interference of light reflected from the various optical surfaces that are present when using laser sources. Results obtained for a critical mixture of aniline and cyclohexane subjected to a vertical temperature gradient will be presented. The

Integrating the Gradient of the Thin Wire Kernel

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Champagne, Nathan J.; Wilton, Donald R.

2008-01-01

A formulation for integrating the gradient of the thin wire kernel is presented. This approach employs a new expression for the gradient of the thin wire kernel derived from a recent technique for numerically evaluating the exact thin wire kernel. This approach should provide essentially arbitrary accuracy and may be used with higher-order elements and basis functions using the procedure described in [4].When the source and observation points are close, the potential integrals over wire segments involving the wire kernel are split into parts to handle the singular behavior of the integrand [1]. The singularity characteristics of the gradient of the wire kernel are different than those of the wire kernel, and the axial and radial components have different singularities. The characteristics of the gradient of the wire kernel are discussed in [2]. To evaluate the near electric and magnetic fields of a wire, the integration of the gradient of the wire kernel needs to be calculated over the source wire. Since the vector bases for current have constant direction on linear wire segments, these integrals reduce to integrals of the form

Frequency-domain beamformers using conjugate gradient techniques for speech enhancement.

PubMed

Zhao, Shengkui; Jones, Douglas L; Khoo, Suiyang; Man, Zhihong

2014-09-01

A multiple-iteration constrained conjugate gradient (MICCG) algorithm and a single-iteration constrained conjugate gradient (SICCG) algorithm are proposed to realize the widely used frequency-domain minimum-variance-distortionless-response (MVDR) beamformers and the resulting algorithms are applied to speech enhancement. The algorithms are derived based on the Lagrange method and the conjugate gradient techniques. The implementations of the algorithms avoid any form of explicit or implicit autocorrelation matrix inversion. Theoretical analysis establishes formal convergence of the algorithms. Specifically, the MICCG algorithm is developed based on a block adaptation approach and it generates a finite sequence of estimates that converge to the MVDR solution. For limited data records, the estimates of the MICCG algorithm are better than the conventional estimators and equivalent to the auxiliary vector algorithms. The SICCG algorithm is developed based on a continuous adaptation approach with a sample-by-sample updating procedure and the estimates asymptotically converge to the MVDR solution. An illustrative example using synthetic data from a uniform linear array is studied and an evaluation on real data recorded by an acoustic vector sensor array is demonstrated. Performance of the MICCG algorithm and the SICCG algorithm are compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.

The Weighted Burgers Vector: a new quantity for constraining dislocation densities and types using electron backscatter diffraction on 2D sections through crystalline materials.

PubMed

Wheeler, J; Mariani, E; Piazolo, S; Prior, D J; Trimby, P; Drury, M R

2009-03-01

The Weighted Burgers Vector (WBV) is defined here as the sum, over all types of dislocations, of [(density of intersections of dislocation lines with a map) x (Burgers vector)]. Here we show that it can be calculated, for any crystal system, solely from orientation gradients in a map view, unlike the full dislocation density tensor, which requires gradients in the third dimension. No assumption is made about gradients in the third dimension and they may be non-zero. The only assumption involved is that elastic strains are small so the lattice distortion is entirely due to dislocations. Orientation gradients can be estimated from gridded orientation measurements obtained by EBSD mapping, so the WBV can be calculated as a vector field on an EBSD map. The magnitude of the WBV gives a lower bound on the magnitude of the dislocation density tensor when that magnitude is defined in a coordinate invariant way. The direction of the WBV can constrain the types of Burgers vectors of geometrically necessary dislocations present in the microstructure, most clearly when it is broken down in terms of lattice vectors. The WBV has three advantages over other measures of local lattice distortion: it is a vector and hence carries more information than a scalar quantity, it has an explicit mathematical link to the individual Burgers vectors of dislocations and, since it is derived via tensor calculus, it is not dependent on the map coordinate system. If a sub-grain wall is included in the WBV calculation, the magnitude of the WBV becomes dependent on the step size but its direction still carries information on the Burgers vectors in the wall. The net Burgers vector content of dislocations intersecting an area of a map can be simply calculated by an integration round the edge of that area, a method which is fast and complements point-by-point WBV calculations.

Vector disparity sensor with vergence control for active vision systems.

PubMed

Barranco, Francisco; Diaz, Javier; Gibaldi, Agostino; Sabatini, Silvio P; Ros, Eduardo

2012-01-01

This paper presents an architecture for computing vector disparity for active vision systems as used on robotics applications. The control of the vergence angle of a binocular system allows us to efficiently explore dynamic environments, but requires a generalization of the disparity computation with respect to a static camera setup, where the disparity is strictly 1-D after the image rectification. The interaction between vision and motor control allows us to develop an active sensor that achieves high accuracy of the disparity computation around the fixation point, and fast reaction time for the vergence control. In this contribution, we address the development of a real-time architecture for vector disparity computation using an FPGA device. We implement the disparity unit and the control module for vergence, version, and tilt to determine the fixation point. In addition, two on-chip different alternatives for the vector disparity engines are discussed based on the luminance (gradient-based) and phase information of the binocular images. The multiscale versions of these engines are able to estimate the vector disparity up to 32 fps on VGA resolution images with very good accuracy as shown using benchmark sequences with known ground-truth. The performances in terms of frame-rate, resource utilization, and accuracy of the presented approaches are discussed. On the basis of these results, our study indicates that the gradient-based approach leads to the best trade-off choice for the integration with the active vision system.

Vector Disparity Sensor with Vergence Control for Active Vision Systems

PubMed Central

Barranco, Francisco; Diaz, Javier; Gibaldi, Agostino; Sabatini, Silvio P.; Ros, Eduardo

2012-01-01

This paper presents an architecture for computing vector disparity for active vision systems as used on robotics applications. The control of the vergence angle of a binocular system allows us to efficiently explore dynamic environments, but requires a generalization of the disparity computation with respect to a static camera setup, where the disparity is strictly 1-D after the image rectification. The interaction between vision and motor control allows us to develop an active sensor that achieves high accuracy of the disparity computation around the fixation point, and fast reaction time for the vergence control. In this contribution, we address the development of a real-time architecture for vector disparity computation using an FPGA device. We implement the disparity unit and the control module for vergence, version, and tilt to determine the fixation point. In addition, two on-chip different alternatives for the vector disparity engines are discussed based on the luminance (gradient-based) and phase information of the binocular images. The multiscale versions of these engines are able to estimate the vector disparity up to 32 fps on VGA resolution images with very good accuracy as shown using benchmark sequences with known ground-truth. The performances in terms of frame-rate, resource utilization, and accuracy of the presented approaches are discussed. On the basis of these results, our study indicates that the gradient-based approach leads to the best trade-off choice for the integration with the active vision system. PMID:22438737

Fast higher-order MR image reconstruction using singular-vector separation.

PubMed

Wilm, Bertram J; Barmet, Christoph; Pruessmann, Klaas P

2012-07-01

Medical resonance imaging (MRI) conventionally relies on spatially linear gradient fields for image encoding. However, in practice various sources of nonlinear fields can perturb the encoding process and give rise to artifacts unless they are suitably addressed at the reconstruction level. Accounting for field perturbations that are neither linear in space nor constant over time, i.e., dynamic higher-order fields, is particularly challenging. It was previously shown to be feasible with conjugate-gradient iteration. However, so far this approach has been relatively slow due to the need to carry out explicit matrix-vector multiplications in each cycle. In this work, it is proposed to accelerate higher-order reconstruction by expanding the encoding matrix such that fast Fourier transform can be employed for more efficient matrix-vector computation. The underlying principle is to represent the perturbing terms as sums of separable functions of space and time. Compact representations with this property are found by singular-vector analysis of the perturbing matrix. Guidelines for balancing the accuracy and speed of the resulting algorithm are derived by error propagation analysis. The proposed technique is demonstrated for the case of higher-order field perturbations due to eddy currents caused by diffusion weighting. In this example, image reconstruction was accelerated by two orders of magnitude.

Stochastic estimates of gradient from laser measurements for an autonomous Martian roving vehicle

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Burger, P. A.

1973-01-01

The general problem of estimating the state vector x from the state equation h = Ax where h, A, and x are all stochastic, is presented. Specifically, the problem is for an autonomous Martian roving vehicle to utilize laser measurements in estimating the gradient of the terrain. Error exists due to two factors - surface roughness and instrumental measurements. The errors in slope depend on the standard deviations of these noise factors. Numerically, the error in gradient is expressed as a function of instrumental inaccuracies. Certain guidelines for the accuracy of permissable gradient must be set. It is found that present technology can meet these guidelines.

Stochastic estimates of gradient from laser measurements for an autonomous Martian Roving Vehicle

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shen, C. N.; Burger, P.

1973-01-01

The general problem presented in this paper is one of estimating the state vector x from the state equation h = Ax, where h, A, and x are all stochastic. Specifically, the problem is for an autonomous Martian Roving Vehicle to utilize laser measurements in estimating the gradient of the terrain. Error exists due to two factors - surface roughness and instrumental measurements. The errors in slope depend on the standard deviations of these noise factors. Numerically, the error in gradient is expressed as a function of instrumental inaccuracies. Certain guidelines for the accuracy of permissable gradient must be set. It is found that present technology can meet these guidelines.-

An M-step preconditioned conjugate gradient method for parallel computation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Adams, L.

1983-01-01

This paper describes a preconditioned conjugate gradient method that can be effectively implemented on both vector machines and parallel arrays to solve sparse symmetric and positive definite systems of linear equations. The implementation on the CYBER 203/205 and on the Finite Element Machine is discussed and results obtained using the method on these machines are given.

ILUBCG2-11: Solution of 11-banded nonsymmetric linear equation systems by a preconditioned biconjugate gradient routine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Y.-M.; Koniges, A. E.; Anderson, D. V.

1989-10-01

The biconjugate gradient method (BCG) provides an attractive alternative to the usual conjugate gradient algorithms for the solution of sparse systems of linear equations with nonsymmetric and indefinite matrix operators. A preconditioned algorithm is given, whose form resembles the incomplete L-U conjugate gradient scheme (ILUCG2) previously presented. Although the BCG scheme requires the storage of two additional vectors, it converges in a significantly lesser number of iterations (often half), while the number of calculations per iteration remains essentially the same.

Observable cosmological vector mode in the dark ages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saga, Shohei

2016-09-01

The second-order vector mode is inevitably induced from the coupling of first-order scalar modes in cosmological perturbation theory and might hinder a possible detection of primordial gravitational waves from inflation through 21 cm lensing observations. Here, we investigate the weak lensing signal in 21 cm photons emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in the dark ages induced by the second-order vector mode by decomposing the deflection angle of the 21 cm lensing signal into the gradient and curl modes. The curl mode is a good tracer of the cosmological vector and tensor modes since the scalar mode does not induce the curl one. By comparing angular power spectra of the 21 cm lensing curl mode induced by the second-order vector mode and primordial gravitational waves whose amplitude is parametrized by the tensor-to-scalar ratio r , we find that the 21 cm curl mode from the second-order vector mode dominates over that from primordial gravitational waves on almost all scales if r ≲10-5. If we use the multipoles of the power spectrum up to ℓmax=1 05 and 1 06 in reconstructing the curl mode from 21 cm temperature maps, the signal-to-noise ratios of the 21 cm curl mode from the second-order vector mode achieve S /N ≈0.46 and 73, respectively. Observation of 21 cm radiation is, in principle, a powerful tool to explore not only the tensor mode but also the cosmological vector mode.

Vector calculus in non-integer dimensional space and its applications to fractal media

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tarasov, Vasily E.

2015-02-01

We suggest a generalization of vector calculus for the case of non-integer dimensional space. The first and second orders operations such as gradient, divergence, the scalar and vector Laplace operators for non-integer dimensional space are defined. For simplification we consider scalar and vector fields that are independent of angles. We formulate a generalization of vector calculus for rotationally covariant scalar and vector functions. This generalization allows us to describe fractal media and materials in the framework of continuum models with non-integer dimensional space. As examples of application of the suggested calculus, we consider elasticity of fractal materials (fractal hollow ball and fractal cylindrical pipe with pressure inside and outside), steady distribution of heat in fractal media, electric field of fractal charged cylinder. We solve the correspondent equations for non-integer dimensional space models.

Contaminant gradients in trees: Directional tree coring reveals boundaries of soil and soil-gas contamination with potential applications in vapor intrusion assessment

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wilson, Jordan L.; Samaranayake, V.A.; Limmer, Matthew A.; Schumacher, John G.; Burken, Joel G.

2017-01-01

Contaminated sites pose ecological and human-health risks through exposure to contaminated soil and groundwater. Whereas we can readily locate, monitor, and track contaminants in groundwater, it is harder to perform these tasks in the vadose zone. In this study, tree-core samples were collected at a Superfund site to determine if the sample-collection location around a particular tree could reveal the subsurface location, or direction, of soil and soil-gas contaminant plumes. Contaminant-centroid vectors were calculated from tree-core data to reveal contaminant distributions in directional tree samples at a higher resolution, and vectors were correlated with soil-gas characterization collected using conventional methods. Results clearly demonstrated that directional tree coring around tree trunks can indicate gradients in soil and soil-gas contaminant plumes, and the strength of the correlations were directly proportionate to the magnitude of tree-core concentration gradients (spearman’s coefficient of -0.61 and -0.55 in soil and tree-core gradients, respectively). Linear regression indicates agreement between the concentration-centroid vectors is significantly affected by in-planta and soil concentration gradients and when concentration centroids in soil are closer to trees. Given the existing link between soil-gas and vapor intrusion, this study also indicates that directional tree coring might be applicable in vapor intrusion assessment.

Contaminant Gradients in Trees: Directional Tree Coring Reveals Boundaries of Soil and Soil-Gas Contamination with Potential Applications in Vapor Intrusion Assessment.

PubMed

Wilson, Jordan L; Samaranayake, V A; Limmer, Matthew A; Schumacher, John G; Burken, Joel G

2017-12-19

Contaminated sites pose ecological and human-health risks through exposure to contaminated soil and groundwater. Whereas we can readily locate, monitor, and track contaminants in groundwater, it is harder to perform these tasks in the vadose zone. In this study, tree-core samples were collected at a Superfund site to determine if the sample-collection location around a particular tree could reveal the subsurface location, or direction, of soil and soil-gas contaminant plumes. Contaminant-centroid vectors were calculated from tree-core data to reveal contaminant distributions in directional tree samples at a higher resolution, and vectors were correlated with soil-gas characterization collected using conventional methods. Results clearly demonstrated that directional tree coring around tree trunks can indicate gradients in soil and soil-gas contaminant plumes, and the strength of the correlations were directly proportionate to the magnitude of tree-core concentration gradients (spearman's coefficient of -0.61 and -0.55 in soil and tree-core gradients, respectively). Linear regression indicates agreement between the concentration-centroid vectors is significantly affected by in planta and soil concentration gradients and when concentration centroids in soil are closer to trees. Given the existing link between soil-gas and vapor intrusion, this study also indicates that directional tree coring might be applicable in vapor intrusion assessment.

Wideband radar cross section reduction using two-dimensional phase gradient metasurfaces

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Li, Yongfeng; Qu, Shaobo; Wang, Jiafu

2014-06-02

Phase gradient metasurface (PGMs) are artificial surfaces that can provide pre-defined in-plane wave-vectors to manipulate the directions of refracted/reflected waves. In this Letter, we propose to achieve wideband radar cross section (RCS) reduction using two-dimensional (2D) PGMs. A 2D PGM was designed using a square combination of 49 split-ring sub-unit cells. The PGM can provide additional wave-vectors along the two in-plane directions simultaneously, leading to either surface wave conversion, deflected reflection, or diffuse reflection. Both the simulation and experiment results verified the wide-band, polarization-independent, high-efficiency RCS reduction induced by the 2D PGM.

Multiple-Point Temperature Gradient Algorithm for Ring Laser Gyroscope Bias Compensation

PubMed Central

Li, Geng; Zhang, Pengfei; Wei, Guo; Xie, Yuanping; Yu, Xudong; Long, Xingwu

2015-01-01

To further improve ring laser gyroscope (RLG) bias stability, a multiple-point temperature gradient algorithm is proposed for RLG bias compensation in this paper. Based on the multiple-point temperature measurement system, a complete thermo-image of the RLG block is developed. Combined with the multiple-point temperature gradients between different points of the RLG block, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to tune the support vector machine (SVM) parameters, and an optimized design for selecting the thermometer locations is also discussed. The experimental results validate the superiority of the introduced method and enhance the precision and generalizability in the RLG bias compensation model. PMID:26633401

Bidirectional composition on lie groups for gradient-based image alignment.

PubMed

Mégret, Rémi; Authesserre, Jean-Baptiste; Berthoumieu, Yannick

2010-09-01

In this paper, a new formulation based on bidirectional composition on Lie groups (BCL) for parametric gradient-based image alignment is presented. Contrary to the conventional approaches, the BCL method takes advantage of the gradients of both template and current image without combining them a priori. Based on this bidirectional formulation, two methods are proposed and their relationship with state-of-the-art gradient based approaches is fully discussed. The first one, i.e., the BCL method, relies on the compositional framework to provide the minimization of the compensated error with respect to an augmented parameter vector. The second one, the projected BCL (PBCL), corresponds to a close approximation of the BCL approach. A comparative study is carried out dealing with computational complexity, convergence rate and frequence of convergence. Numerical experiments using a conventional benchmark show the performance improvement especially for asymmetric levels of noise, which is also discussed from a theoretical point of view.

Lefschetz thimbles in fermionic effective models with repulsive vector-field

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mori, Yuto; Kashiwa, Kouji; Ohnishi, Akira

2018-06-01

We discuss two problems in complexified auxiliary fields in fermionic effective models, the auxiliary sign problem associated with the repulsive vector-field and the choice of the cut for the scalar field appearing from the logarithmic function. In the fermionic effective models with attractive scalar and repulsive vector-type interaction, the auxiliary scalar and vector fields appear in the path integral after the bosonization of fermion bilinears. When we make the path integral well-defined by the Wick rotation of the vector field, the oscillating Boltzmann weight appears in the partition function. This "auxiliary" sign problem can be solved by using the Lefschetz-thimble path-integral method, where the integration path is constructed in the complex plane. Another serious obstacle in the numerical construction of Lefschetz thimbles is caused by singular points and cuts induced by multivalued functions of the complexified scalar field in the momentum integration. We propose a new prescription which fixes gradient flow trajectories on the same Riemann sheet in the flow evolution by performing the momentum integration in the complex domain.

A contemporary view of the ventricular gradient of Wilson.

PubMed

Plonsey, R

1979-10-01

We have derived quantitative expressions for QRS, T, and QRST areas of the scalar electrocardiogram. The QRST area, or ventricular gradient, is seen to be essentially independent of the activation sequence and to reflect recovery properties of the tissue as weighted by the vector lead field of a given lead. The results are derived for uniform isotropic conditions and under the assumption that the temporal waveforms everywhere are identical except for possible variations in the duration of the plateau. However, it is noted that the results are, probably, valid under anisotropic conditions as well. The examination of ventricular gradients from epicardial and intramural leads should reflect local recovery properties and be a useful tool in study of the physiology of recovery, as well as the study of arrhythmias.

Renormalizability of the gradient flow in the 2D O(N) non-linear sigma model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makino, Hiroki; Suzuki, Hiroshi

2015-03-01

It is known that the gauge field and its composite operators evolved by the Yang-Mills gradient flow are ultraviolet (UV) finite without any multiplicative wave function renormalization. In this paper, we prove that the gradient flow in the 2D O(N) non-linear sigma model possesses a similar property: The flowed N-vector field and its composite operators are UV finite without multiplicative wave function renormalization. Our proof in all orders of perturbation theory uses a (2+1)-dimensional field theoretical representation of the gradient flow, which possesses local gauge invariance without gauge field. As an application of the UV finiteness of the gradient flow, we construct the energy-momentum tensor in the lattice formulation of the O(N) non-linear sigma model that automatically restores the correct normalization and the conservation law in the continuum limit.

An efficient parallel algorithm for matrix-vector multiplication

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hendrickson, B.; Leland, R.; Plimpton, S.

The multiplication of a vector by a matrix is the kernel computation of many algorithms in scientific computation. A fast parallel algorithm for this calculation is therefore necessary if one is to make full use of the new generation of parallel supercomputers. This paper presents a high performance, parallel matrix-vector multiplication algorithm that is particularly well suited to hypercube multiprocessors. For an n x n matrix on p processors, the communication cost of this algorithm is O(n/[radical]p + log(p)), independent of the matrix sparsity pattern. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated by employing it as the kernel in themore » well-known NAS conjugate gradient benchmark, where a run time of 6.09 seconds was observed. This is the best published performance on this benchmark achieved to date using a massively parallel supercomputer.« less

MATLAB Simulation of Gradient-Based Neural Network for Online Matrix Inversion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yunong; Chen, Ke; Ma, Weimu; Li, Xiao-Dong

This paper investigates the simulation of a gradient-based recurrent neural network for online solution of the matrix-inverse problem. Several important techniques are employed as follows to simulate such a neural system. 1) Kronecker product of matrices is introduced to transform a matrix-differential-equation (MDE) to a vector-differential-equation (VDE); i.e., finally, a standard ordinary-differential-equation (ODE) is obtained. 2) MATLAB routine "ode45" is introduced to solve the transformed initial-value ODE problem. 3) In addition to various implementation errors, different kinds of activation functions are simulated to show the characteristics of such a neural network. Simulation results substantiate the theoretical analysis and efficacy of the gradient-based neural network for online constant matrix inversion.

Numerical simulations of short-mixing-time double-wave-vector diffusion-weighting experiments with multiple concatenations on whole-body MR systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Finsterbusch, Jürgen

2010-12-01

Double- or two-wave-vector diffusion-weighting experiments with short mixing times in which two diffusion-weighting periods are applied in direct succession, are a promising tool to estimate cell sizes in the living tissue. However, the underlying effect, a signal difference between parallel and antiparallel wave vector orientations, is considerably reduced for the long gradient pulses required on whole-body MR systems. Recently, it has been shown that multiple concatenations of the two wave vectors in a single acquisition can double the modulation amplitude if short gradient pulses are used. In this study, numerical simulations of such experiments were performed with parameters achievable with whole-body MR systems. It is shown that the theoretical model yields a good approximation of the signal behavior if an additional term describing free diffusion is included. More importantly, it is demonstrated that the shorter gradient pulses sufficient to achieve the desired diffusion weighting for multiple concatenations, increase the signal modulation considerably, e.g. by a factor of about five for five concatenations. Even at identical echo times, achieved by a shortened diffusion time, a moderate number of concatenations significantly improves the signal modulation. Thus, experiments on whole-body MR systems may benefit from multiple concatenations.

SPECIAL ISSUE ON OPTICAL PROCESSING OF INFORMATION: Reconstruction of vector physical fields by optical tomography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kulchin, Yurii N.; Vitrik, O. B.; Kamenev, O. T.; Kirichenko, O. V.; Petrov, Yu S.

1995-10-01

Reconstruction of vector physical fields by optical tomography, with the aid of a system of fibre-optic measuring lines, is considered. The reported experimental results are used to reconstruct the distribution of the square of the gradient of transverse displacements of a flat membrane.

SU-F-J-95: Impact of Shape Complexity On the Accuracy of Gradient-Based PET Volume Delineation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dance, M; Wu, G; Gao, Y

2016-06-15

Purpose: Explore correlation of tumor complexity shape with PET target volume accuracy when delineated with gradient-based segmentation tool. Methods: A total of 24 clinically realistic digital PET Monte Carlo (MC) phantoms of NSCLC were used in the study. The phantom simulated 29 thoracic lesions (lung primary and mediastinal lymph nodes) of varying size, shape, location, and {sup 18}F-FDG activity. A program was developed to calculate a curvature vector along the outline and the standard deviation of this vector was used as a metric to quantify a shape’s “complexity score”. This complexity score was calculated for standard geometric shapes and MC-generatedmore » target volumes in PET phantom images. All lesions were contoured using a commercially available gradient-based segmentation tool and the differences in volume from the MC-generated volumes were calculated as the measure of the accuracy of segmentation. Results: The average absolute percent difference in volumes between the MC-volumes and gradient-based volumes was 11% (0.4%–48.4%). The complexity score showed strong correlation with standard geometric shapes. However, no relationship was found between the complexity score and the accuracy of segmentation by gradient-based tool on MC simulated tumors (R{sup 2} = 0.156). When the lesions were grouped into primary lung lesions and mediastinal/mediastinal adjacent lesions, the average absolute percent difference in volumes were 6% and 29%, respectively. The former group is more isolated and the latter is more surround by tissues with relatively high SUV background. Conclusion: The complexity shape of NSCLC lesions has little effect on the accuracy of the gradient-based segmentation method and thus is not a good predictor of uncertainty in target volume delineation. Location of lesion within a relatively high SUV background may play a more significant role in the accuracy of gradient-based segmentation.« less

Spatial Resolution Effect on Forest Road Gradient Calculation and Erosion Modelling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cao, L.; Elliot, W.

2017-12-01

Road erosion is one of the main sediment sources in a forest watershed and should be properly evaluated. With the help of GIS technology, road topography can be determined and soil loss can be predicted at a watershed scale. As a vector geographical feature, the road gradient should be calculated following road direction rather than hillslope direction. This calculation might be difficult with a coarse (30-m) DEM which only provides the underlying topography information. This study was designed to explore the effect of road segmentation and DEM resolution on the road gradient calculation and erosion prediction at a watershed scale. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model was run on road segments of 9 lengths ranging from 40m to 200m. Road gradient was calculated from three DEM data sets: 1m LiDAR, and 10m and 30m USGS DEMs. The 1m LiDAR DEM calculated gradients were very close to the field observed road gradients, so we assumed the 1m LiDAR DEM predicted the true road gradient. The results revealed that longer road segments skipped detail topographical undulations and resulted in lower road gradients. Coarser DEMs computed steeper road gradients as larger grid cells covered more adjacent areas outside road resulting in larger elevation differences. Field surveyed results also revealed that coarser DEM might result in more gradient deviation in a curved road segment when it passes through a convex or concave slope. As road segment length increased, the gradient difference between three DEMs was reduced. There were no significant differences between road gradients of different segment lengths and DEM resolution when segments were longer than 100m. For long segments, the 10m DEM calculated road gradient was similar to the 1m LiDAR gradient. When evaluating the effects of road segment length, the predicted erosion rate decreased with increasing length when road gradient was less than 3%. In cases where the road gradients exceed 3% and rill erosion dominates

Conjugate gradient based projection - A new explicit methodology for frictional contact

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tamma, Kumar K.; Li, Maocheng; Sha, Desong

1993-01-01

With special attention towards the applicability to parallel computation or vectorization, a new and effective explicit approach for linear complementary formulations involving a conjugate gradient based projection methodology is proposed in this study for contact problems with Coulomb friction. The overall objectives are focussed towards providing an explicit methodology of computation for the complete contact problem with friction. In this regard, the primary idea for solving the linear complementary formulations stems from an established search direction which is projected to a feasible region determined by the non-negative constraint condition; this direction is then applied to the Fletcher-Reeves conjugate gradient method resulting in a powerful explicit methodology which possesses high accuracy, excellent convergence characteristics, fast computational speed and is relatively simple to implement for contact problems involving Coulomb friction.

The ecological foundations of transmission potential and vector-borne disease in urban landscapes.

PubMed

LaDeau, Shannon L; Allan, Brian F; Leisnham, Paul T; Levy, Michael Z

2015-07-01

Urban transmission of arthropod-vectored disease has increased in recent decades. Understanding and managing transmission potential in urban landscapes requires integration of sociological and ecological processes that regulate vector population dynamics, feeding behavior, and vector-pathogen interactions in these unique ecosystems. Vectorial capacity is a key metric for generating predictive understanding about transmission potential in systems with obligate vector transmission. This review evaluates how urban conditions, specifically habitat suitability and local temperature regimes, and the heterogeneity of urban landscapes can influence the biologically-relevant parameters that define vectorial capacity: vector density, survivorship, biting rate, extrinsic incubation period, and vector competence.Urban landscapes represent unique mosaics of habitat. Incidence of vector-borne disease in urban host populations is rarely, if ever, evenly distributed across an urban area. The persistence and quality of vector habitat can vary significantly across socio-economic boundaries to influence vector species composition and abundance, often generating socio-economically distinct gradients of transmission potential across neighborhoods.Urban regions often experience unique temperature regimes, broadly termed urban heat islands (UHI). Arthropod vectors are ectothermic organisms and their growth, survival, and behavior are highly sensitive to environmental temperatures. Vector response to UHI conditions is dependent on regional temperature profiles relative to the vector's thermal performance range. In temperate climates UHI can facilitate increased vector development rates while having countervailing influence on survival and feeding behavior. Understanding how urban heat island (UHI) conditions alter thermal and moisture constraints across the vector life cycle to influence transmission processes is an important direction for both empirical and modeling research.There remain

Analysis of Particle Content of Recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus Serotype 8 Vectors by Ion-Exchange Chromatography

PubMed Central

Lock, Martin; Alvira, Mauricio R.

2012-01-01

Abstract Advances in adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated gene therapy have brought the possibility of commercial manufacturing of AAV vectors one step closer. To realize this prospect, a parallel effort with the goal of ever-increasing sophistication for AAV vector production technology and supporting assays will be required. Among the important release assays for a clinical gene therapy product, those monitoring potentially hazardous contaminants are most critical for patient safety. A prominent contaminant in many AAV vector preparations is vector particles lacking a genome, which can substantially increase the dose of AAV capsid proteins and lead to possible unwanted immunological consequences. Current methods to determine empty particle content suffer from inconsistency, are adversely affected by contaminants, or are not applicable to all serotypes. Here we describe the development of an ion-exchange chromatography-based assay that permits the rapid separation and relative quantification of AAV8 empty and full vector particles through the application of shallow gradients and a strong anion-exchange monolith chromatography medium. PMID:22428980

Online Sequential Projection Vector Machine with Adaptive Data Mean Update

PubMed Central

Chen, Lin; Jia, Ji-Ting; Zhang, Qiong; Deng, Wan-Yu; Wei, Wei

2016-01-01

We propose a simple online learning algorithm especial for high-dimensional data. The algorithm is referred to as online sequential projection vector machine (OSPVM) which derives from projection vector machine and can learn from data in one-by-one or chunk-by-chunk mode. In OSPVM, data centering, dimension reduction, and neural network training are integrated seamlessly. In particular, the model parameters including (1) the projection vectors for dimension reduction, (2) the input weights, biases, and output weights, and (3) the number of hidden nodes can be updated simultaneously. Moreover, only one parameter, the number of hidden nodes, needs to be determined manually, and this makes it easy for use in real applications. Performance comparison was made on various high-dimensional classification problems for OSPVM against other fast online algorithms including budgeted stochastic gradient descent (BSGD) approach, adaptive multihyperplane machine (AMM), primal estimated subgradient solver (Pegasos), online sequential extreme learning machine (OSELM), and SVD + OSELM (feature selection based on SVD is performed before OSELM). The results obtained demonstrated the superior generalization performance and efficiency of the OSPVM. PMID:27143958

Online Sequential Projection Vector Machine with Adaptive Data Mean Update.

PubMed

Chen, Lin; Jia, Ji-Ting; Zhang, Qiong; Deng, Wan-Yu; Wei, Wei

2016-01-01

We propose a simple online learning algorithm especial for high-dimensional data. The algorithm is referred to as online sequential projection vector machine (OSPVM) which derives from projection vector machine and can learn from data in one-by-one or chunk-by-chunk mode. In OSPVM, data centering, dimension reduction, and neural network training are integrated seamlessly. In particular, the model parameters including (1) the projection vectors for dimension reduction, (2) the input weights, biases, and output weights, and (3) the number of hidden nodes can be updated simultaneously. Moreover, only one parameter, the number of hidden nodes, needs to be determined manually, and this makes it easy for use in real applications. Performance comparison was made on various high-dimensional classification problems for OSPVM against other fast online algorithms including budgeted stochastic gradient descent (BSGD) approach, adaptive multihyperplane machine (AMM), primal estimated subgradient solver (Pegasos), online sequential extreme learning machine (OSELM), and SVD + OSELM (feature selection based on SVD is performed before OSELM). The results obtained demonstrated the superior generalization performance and efficiency of the OSPVM.

Deep neural mapping support vector machines.

PubMed

Li, Yujian; Zhang, Ting

2017-09-01

The choice of kernel has an important effect on the performance of a support vector machine (SVM). The effect could be reduced by NEUROSVM, an architecture using multilayer perceptron for feature extraction and SVM for classification. In binary classification, a general linear kernel NEUROSVM can be theoretically simplified as an input layer, many hidden layers, and an SVM output layer. As a feature extractor, the sub-network composed of the input and hidden layers is first trained together with a virtual ordinary output layer by backpropagation, then with the output of its last hidden layer taken as input of the SVM classifier for further training separately. By taking the sub-network as a kernel mapping from the original input space into a feature space, we present a novel model, called deep neural mapping support vector machine (DNMSVM), from the viewpoint of deep learning. This model is also a new and general kernel learning method, where the kernel mapping is indeed an explicit function expressed as a sub-network, different from an implicit function induced by a kernel function traditionally. Moreover, we exploit a two-stage procedure of contrastive divergence learning and gradient descent for DNMSVM to jointly training an adaptive kernel mapping instead of a kernel function, without requirement of kernel tricks. As a whole of the sub-network and the SVM classifier, the joint training of DNMSVM is done by using gradient descent to optimize the objective function with the sub-network layer-wise pre-trained via contrastive divergence learning of restricted Boltzmann machines. Compared to the separate training of NEUROSVM, the joint training is a new algorithm for DNMSVM to have advantages over NEUROSVM. Experimental results show that DNMSVM can outperform NEUROSVM and RBFSVM (i.e., SVM with the kernel of radial basis function), demonstrating its effectiveness. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Characterization of thermotropism in primary roots of maize: dependence on temperature and temperature gradient, and interaction with gravitropism

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Poff, K. L.

1991-01-01

Thermotropism in primary roots of Zea mays L. was studied with respect to gradient strength (degrees C cm-1), temperature of exposure within a gradient, pre-treatment temperature, and gravitropic stimulation. The magnitude of the response decreased with gradient strength. Maximum thermotropism was independent of gradient strength and pre-treatment temperature. The range of temperature for positive and negative thermotropism did not change with pre-treatment temperature. However, the exact range of temperatures for positive and negative thermotropism varied with gradient strengths. In general, temperatures of exposure lower than 25 degrees C resulted in positive tropic responses while temperatures of exposure of 39 degrees C or more resulted in negative tropic responses. Thermotropism was shown to modify and reverse the normal gravitropic curvature of a horizontal root when thermal gradients were applied opposite the 1 g vector. It is concluded that root thermotropism is a consequence of thermal sensing and that the curvature of the primary root results from the interaction of the thermal and gravitational sensing systems.

SAGRAD: A Program for Neural Network Training with Simulated Annealing and the Conjugate Gradient Method

PubMed Central

Bernal, Javier; Torres-Jimenez, Jose

2015-01-01

SAGRAD (Simulated Annealing GRADient), a Fortran 77 program for computing neural networks for classification using batch learning, is discussed. Neural network training in SAGRAD is based on a combination of simulated annealing and Møller’s scaled conjugate gradient algorithm, the latter a variation of the traditional conjugate gradient method, better suited for the nonquadratic nature of neural networks. Different aspects of the implementation of the training process in SAGRAD are discussed, such as the efficient computation of gradients and multiplication of vectors by Hessian matrices that are required by Møller’s algorithm; the (re)initialization of weights with simulated annealing required to (re)start Møller’s algorithm the first time and each time thereafter that it shows insufficient progress in reaching a possibly local minimum; and the use of simulated annealing when Møller’s algorithm, after possibly making considerable progress, becomes stuck at a local minimum or flat area of weight space. Outlines of the scaled conjugate gradient algorithm, the simulated annealing procedure and the training process used in SAGRAD are presented together with results from running SAGRAD on two examples of training data. PMID:26958442

SAGRAD: A Program for Neural Network Training with Simulated Annealing and the Conjugate Gradient Method.

PubMed

Bernal, Javier; Torres-Jimenez, Jose

2015-01-01

SAGRAD (Simulated Annealing GRADient), a Fortran 77 program for computing neural networks for classification using batch learning, is discussed. Neural network training in SAGRAD is based on a combination of simulated annealing and Møller's scaled conjugate gradient algorithm, the latter a variation of the traditional conjugate gradient method, better suited for the nonquadratic nature of neural networks. Different aspects of the implementation of the training process in SAGRAD are discussed, such as the efficient computation of gradients and multiplication of vectors by Hessian matrices that are required by Møller's algorithm; the (re)initialization of weights with simulated annealing required to (re)start Møller's algorithm the first time and each time thereafter that it shows insufficient progress in reaching a possibly local minimum; and the use of simulated annealing when Møller's algorithm, after possibly making considerable progress, becomes stuck at a local minimum or flat area of weight space. Outlines of the scaled conjugate gradient algorithm, the simulated annealing procedure and the training process used in SAGRAD are presented together with results from running SAGRAD on two examples of training data.

Toward an integrated view of ionospheric plasma instabilities: Altitudinal transitions and strong gradient case

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makarevich, Roman A.

2016-04-01

A general dispersion relation is derived that integrates the Farley-Buneman, gradient-drift, and current-convective plasma instabilities (FBI, GDI, and CCI) within the same formalism for an arbitrary altitude, wave propagation vector, and background density gradient. The limiting cases of the FBI/GDI in the E region for nearly field-aligned irregularities, GDI/CCI in the main F region at long wavelengths, and GDI at high altitudes are successfully recovered using analytic analysis. Numerical solutions are found for more general representative cases spanning the entire ionosphere. It is demonstrated that the results are consistent with those obtained using a general FBI/GDI/CCI theory developed previously at and near E region altitudes under most conditions. The most significant differences are obtained for strong gradients (scale lengths of 100 m) at high altitudes such as those that may occur during highly structured soft particle precipitation events. It is shown that the strong gradient case is dominated by inertial effects and, for some scales, surprisingly strong additional damping due to higher-order gradient terms. The growth rate behavior is examined with a particular focus on the range of wave propagations with positive growth (instability cone) and its transitions between altitudinal regions. It is shown that these transitions are largely controlled by the plasma density gradients even when FBI is operational.

Three-dimensional Gravity Inversion with a New Gradient Scheme on Unstructured Grids

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, S.; Yin, C.; Gao, X.; Liu, Y.; Zhang, B.

2017-12-01

Stabilized gradient-based methods have been proved to be efficient for inverse problems. Based on these methods, setting gradient close to zero can effectively minimize the objective function. Thus the gradient of objective function determines the inversion results. By analyzing the cause of poor resolution on depth in gradient-based gravity inversion methods, we find that imposing depth weighting functional in conventional gradient can improve the depth resolution to some extent. However, the improvement is affected by the regularization parameter and the effect of the regularization term becomes smaller with increasing depth (shown as Figure 1 (a)). In this paper, we propose a new gradient scheme for gravity inversion by introducing a weighted model vector. The new gradient can improve the depth resolution more efficiently, which is independent of the regularization parameter, and the effect of regularization term will not be weakened when depth increases. Besides, fuzzy c-means clustering method and smooth operator are both used as regularization terms to yield an internal consecutive inverse model with sharp boundaries (Sun and Li, 2015). We have tested our new gradient scheme with unstructured grids on synthetic data to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. Gravity forward modeling with unstructured grids is based on the algorithm proposed by Okbe (1979). We use a linear conjugate gradient inversion scheme to solve the inversion problem. The numerical experiments show a great improvement in depth resolution compared with regular gradient scheme, and the inverse model is compact at all depths (shown as Figure 1 (b)). AcknowledgeThis research is supported by Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (41530320), China Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists (41404093), and Key National Research Project of China (2016YFC0303100, 2017YFC0601900). ReferencesSun J, Li Y. 2015. Multidomain petrophysically constrained inversion and

Analysis of the vector magnetic fields of complex sunspots

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Patty, S. R.

1981-01-01

An analysis of the vector magnetic field in the delta-configurations of two complex sunspot groups is presented, noting several characteristics identified in the delta-configurations. The observations of regions 2469 (S12E80) and 2470 (S21E83) took place in May, 1980 with a vector magnetograph, verified by optical viewing. Longitudinal magnetic field plots located the delta-configurations in relation to the transverse field neutral line. It is shown that data on the polarization yields qualitative information on the magnetic field strengths, while the azimuth of the transverse field can be obtained from the relative intensities of linear polarization measurements aligned with respect to the magnetograph analyses axis at 0 and 90 deg, and at the plus and minus 45 deg positions. Details of the longitudinal fields are discussed. A strong, sheared transverse field component is found to be a signature of strong delta. A weak delta is accompanied by a weak longitudinal gradient with an unsheared transverse component of variable strength.

Syngeneic AAV pseudo-vectors potentiates full vector transduction

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

An excessive amount of empty capsids are generated during regular AAV vector production process. These pseudo-vectors often remain in final vectors used for animal studies or clinical trials. The potential effects of these pseudo-vectors on AAV transduction have been a major concern. In the current ...

Spectral functions with the density matrix renormalization group: Krylov-space approach for correction vectors

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None, None

Frequency-dependent correlations, such as the spectral function and the dynamical structure factor, help illustrate condensed matter experiments. Within the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) framework, an accurate method for calculating spectral functions directly in frequency is the correction-vector method. The correction vector can be computed by solving a linear equation or by minimizing a functional. Our paper proposes an alternative to calculate the correction vector: to use the Krylov-space approach. This paper also studies the accuracy and performance of the Krylov-space approach, when applied to the Heisenberg, the t-J, and the Hubbard models. The cases we studied indicate that themore » Krylov-space approach can be more accurate and efficient than the conjugate gradient, and that the error of the former integrates best when a Krylov-space decomposition is also used for ground state DMRG.« less

Spectral functions with the density matrix renormalization group: Krylov-space approach for correction vectors

DOE PAGES

None, None

2016-11-21

Frequency-dependent correlations, such as the spectral function and the dynamical structure factor, help illustrate condensed matter experiments. Within the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) framework, an accurate method for calculating spectral functions directly in frequency is the correction-vector method. The correction vector can be computed by solving a linear equation or by minimizing a functional. Our paper proposes an alternative to calculate the correction vector: to use the Krylov-space approach. This paper also studies the accuracy and performance of the Krylov-space approach, when applied to the Heisenberg, the t-J, and the Hubbard models. The cases we studied indicate that themore » Krylov-space approach can be more accurate and efficient than the conjugate gradient, and that the error of the former integrates best when a Krylov-space decomposition is also used for ground state DMRG.« less

Truncated Conjugate Gradient: An Optimal Strategy for the Analytical Evaluation of the Many-Body Polarization Energy and Forces in Molecular Simulations.

PubMed

Aviat, Félix; Levitt, Antoine; Stamm, Benjamin; Maday, Yvon; Ren, Pengyu; Ponder, Jay W; Lagardère, Louis; Piquemal, Jean-Philip

2017-01-10

We introduce a new class of methods, denoted as Truncated Conjugate Gradient(TCG), to solve the many-body polarization energy and its associated forces in molecular simulations (i.e. molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo). The method consists in a fixed number of Conjugate Gradient (CG) iterations. TCG approaches provide a scalable solution to the polarization problem at a user-chosen cost and a corresponding optimal accuracy. The optimality of the CG-method guarantees that the number of the required matrix-vector products are reduced to a minimum compared to other iterative methods. This family of methods is non-empirical, fully adaptive, and provides analytical gradients, avoiding therefore any energy drift in MD as compared to popular iterative solvers. Besides speed, one great advantage of this class of approximate methods is that their accuracy is systematically improvable. Indeed, as the CG-method is a Krylov subspace method, the associated error is monotonically reduced at each iteration. On top of that, two improvements can be proposed at virtually no cost: (i) the use of preconditioners can be employed, which leads to the Truncated Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (TPCG); (ii) since the residual of the final step of the CG-method is available, one additional Picard fixed point iteration ("peek"), equivalent to one step of Jacobi Over Relaxation (JOR) with relaxation parameter ω, can be made at almost no cost. This method is denoted by TCG-n(ω). Black-box adaptive methods to find good choices of ω are provided and discussed. Results show that TPCG-3(ω) is converged to high accuracy (a few kcal/mol) for various types of systems including proteins and highly charged systems at the fixed cost of four matrix-vector products: three CG iterations plus the initial CG descent direction. Alternatively, T(P)CG-2(ω) provides robust results at a reduced cost (three matrix-vector products) and offers new perspectives for long polarizable MD as a production

Truncated Conjugate Gradient: An Optimal Strategy for the Analytical Evaluation of the Many-Body Polarization Energy and Forces in Molecular Simulations

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

We introduce a new class of methods, denoted as Truncated Conjugate Gradient(TCG), to solve the many-body polarization energy and its associated forces in molecular simulations (i.e. molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo). The method consists in a fixed number of Conjugate Gradient (CG) iterations. TCG approaches provide a scalable solution to the polarization problem at a user-chosen cost and a corresponding optimal accuracy. The optimality of the CG-method guarantees that the number of the required matrix-vector products are reduced to a minimum compared to other iterative methods. This family of methods is non-empirical, fully adaptive, and provides analytical gradients, avoiding therefore any energy drift in MD as compared to popular iterative solvers. Besides speed, one great advantage of this class of approximate methods is that their accuracy is systematically improvable. Indeed, as the CG-method is a Krylov subspace method, the associated error is monotonically reduced at each iteration. On top of that, two improvements can be proposed at virtually no cost: (i) the use of preconditioners can be employed, which leads to the Truncated Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (TPCG); (ii) since the residual of the final step of the CG-method is available, one additional Picard fixed point iteration (“peek”), equivalent to one step of Jacobi Over Relaxation (JOR) with relaxation parameter ω, can be made at almost no cost. This method is denoted by TCG-n(ω). Black-box adaptive methods to find good choices of ω are provided and discussed. Results show that TPCG-3(ω) is converged to high accuracy (a few kcal/mol) for various types of systems including proteins and highly charged systems at the fixed cost of four matrix-vector products: three CG iterations plus the initial CG descent direction. Alternatively, T(P)CG-2(ω) provides robust results at a reduced cost (three matrix-vector products) and offers new perspectives for long polarizable MD as a production

Emerging Vector-Borne Diseases - Incidence through Vectors.

PubMed

Savić, Sara; Vidić, Branka; Grgić, Zivoslav; Potkonjak, Aleksandar; Spasojevic, Ljubica

2014-01-01

Vector-borne diseases use to be a major public health concern only in tropical and subtropical areas, but today they are an emerging threat for the continental and developed countries also. Nowadays, in intercontinental countries, there is a struggle with emerging diseases, which have found their way to appear through vectors. Vector-borne zoonotic diseases occur when vectors, animal hosts, climate conditions, pathogens, and susceptible human population exist at the same time, at the same place. Global climate change is predicted to lead to an increase in vector-borne infectious diseases and disease outbreaks. It could affect the range and population of pathogens, host and vectors, transmission season, etc. Reliable surveillance for diseases that are most likely to emerge is required. Canine vector-borne diseases represent a complex group of diseases including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, bartonellosis, borreliosis, dirofilariosis, ehrlichiosis, and leishmaniosis. Some of these diseases cause serious clinical symptoms in dogs and some of them have a zoonotic potential with an effect to public health. It is expected from veterinarians in coordination with medical doctors to play a fundamental role at primarily prevention and then treatment of vector-borne diseases in dogs. The One Health concept has to be integrated into the struggle against emerging diseases. During a 4-year period, from 2009 to 2013, a total number of 551 dog samples were analyzed for vector-borne diseases (borreliosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, dirofilariosis, and leishmaniasis) in routine laboratory work. The analysis was done by serological tests - ELISA for borreliosis, dirofilariosis, and leishmaniasis, modified Knott test for dirofilariosis, and blood smear for babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and anaplasmosis. This number of samples represented 75% of total number of samples that were sent for analysis for different diseases in dogs. Annually, on average more then half of the samples

Evaluation of Temperature Gradient in Advanced Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (AADSF) by Numerical Simulation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bune, Andris V.; Gillies, Donald C.; Lehoczky, Sandor L.

1996-01-01

A numerical model of heat transfer using combined conduction, radiation and convection in AADSF was used to evaluate temperature gradients in the vicinity of the crystal/melt interface for variety of hot and cold zone set point temperatures specifically for the growth of mercury cadmium telluride (MCT). Reverse usage of hot and cold zones was simulated to aid the choice of proper orientation of crystal/melt interface regarding residual acceleration vector without actual change of furnace location on board the orbiter. It appears that an additional booster heater will be extremely helpful to ensure desired temperature gradient when hot and cold zones are reversed. Further efforts are required to investigate advantages/disadvantages of symmetrical furnace design (i.e. with similar length of hot and cold zones).

Evidence that implicit assumptions of ‘no evolution’ of disease vectors in changing environments can be violated on a rapid timescale

PubMed Central

Egizi, Andrea; Fefferman, Nina H.; Fonseca, Dina M.

2015-01-01

Projected impacts of climate change on vector-borne disease dynamics must consider many variables relevant to hosts, vectors and pathogens, including how altered environmental characteristics might affect the spatial distributions of vector species. However, many predictive models for vector distributions consider their habitat requirements to be fixed over relevant time-scales, when they may actually be capable of rapid evolutionary change and even adaptation. We examine the genetic signature of a spatial expansion by an invasive vector into locations with novel temperature conditions compared to its native range as a proxy for how existing vector populations may respond to temporally changing habitat. Specifically, we compare invasions into different climate ranges and characterize the importance of selection from the invaded habitat. We demonstrate that vector species can exhibit evolutionary responses (altered allelic frequencies) to a temperature gradient in as little as 7–10 years even in the presence of high gene flow, and further, that this response varies depending on the strength of selection. We interpret these findings in the context of climate change predictions for vector populations and emphasize the importance of incorporating vector evolution into models of future vector-borne disease dynamics. PMID:25688024

VectorBase: a home for invertebrate vectors of human pathogens

PubMed Central

Lawson, Daniel; Arensburger, Peter; Atkinson, Peter; Besansky, Nora J.; Bruggner, Robert V.; Butler, Ryan; Campbell, Kathryn S.; Christophides, George K.; Christley, Scott; Dialynas, Emmanuel; Emmert, David; Hammond, Martin; Hill, Catherine A.; Kennedy, Ryan C.; Lobo, Neil F.; MacCallum, M. Robert; Madey, Greg; Megy, Karine; Redmond, Seth; Russo, Susan; Severson, David W.; Stinson, Eric O.; Topalis, Pantelis; Zdobnov, Evgeny M.; Birney, Ewan; Gelbart, William M.; Kafatos, Fotis C.; Louis, Christos; Collins, Frank H.

2007-01-01

VectorBase () is a web-accessible data repository for information about invertebrate vectors of human pathogens. VectorBase annotates and maintains vector genomes providing an integrated resource for the research community. Currently, VectorBase contains genome information for two organisms: Anopheles gambiae, a vector for the Plasmodium protozoan agent causing malaria, and Aedes aegypti, a vector for the flaviviral agents causing Yellow fever and Dengue fever. PMID:17145709

Using geometric morphometric visualizations of directional selection gradients to investigate morphological differentiation.

PubMed

Weaver, Timothy D; Gunz, Philipp

2018-04-01

Researchers studying extant and extinct taxa are often interested in identifying the evolutionary processes that have lead to the morphological differences among the taxa. Ideally, one could distinguish the influences of neutral evolutionary processes (genetic drift, mutation) from natural selection, and in situations for which selection is implicated, identify the targets of selection. The directional selection gradient is an effective tool for investigating evolutionary process, because it can relate form (size and shape) differences between taxa to the variation and covariation found within taxa. However, although most modern morphometric analyses use the tools of geometric morphometrics (GM) to analyze landmark data, to date, selection gradients have mainly been calculated from linear measurements. To address this methodological gap, here we present a GM approach for visualizing and comparing between-taxon selection gradients with each other, associated difference vectors, and "selection" gradients from neutral simulations. To exemplify our approach, we use a dataset of 347 three-dimensional landmarks and semilandmarks recorded on the crania of 260 primate specimens (112 humans, 67 common chimpanzees, 36 bonobos, 45 gorillas). Results on this example dataset show how incorporating geometric information can provide important insights into the evolution of the human braincase, and serve to demonstrate the utility of our approach for understanding morphological evolution. © 2018 The Author(s). Evolution © 2018 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

VectorBase: a data resource for invertebrate vector genomics

PubMed Central

Lawson, Daniel; Arensburger, Peter; Atkinson, Peter; Besansky, Nora J.; Bruggner, Robert V.; Butler, Ryan; Campbell, Kathryn S.; Christophides, George K.; Christley, Scott; Dialynas, Emmanuel; Hammond, Martin; Hill, Catherine A.; Konopinski, Nathan; Lobo, Neil F.; MacCallum, Robert M.; Madey, Greg; Megy, Karine; Meyer, Jason; Redmond, Seth; Severson, David W.; Stinson, Eric O.; Topalis, Pantelis; Birney, Ewan; Gelbart, William M.; Kafatos, Fotis C.; Louis, Christos; Collins, Frank H.

2009-01-01

VectorBase (http://www.vectorbase.org) is an NIAID-funded Bioinformatic Resource Center focused on invertebrate vectors of human pathogens. VectorBase annotates and curates vector genomes providing a web accessible integrated resource for the research community. Currently, VectorBase contains genome information for three mosquito species: Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae and Culex quinquefasciatus, a body louse Pediculus humanus and a tick species Ixodes scapularis. Since our last report VectorBase has initiated a community annotation system, a microarray and gene expression repository and controlled vocabularies for anatomy and insecticide resistance. We have continued to develop both the software infrastructure and tools for interrogating the stored data. PMID:19028744

The Local Stellar Velocity Field via Vector Spherical Harmonics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Markarov, V. V.; Murphy, D. W.

2007-01-01

We analyze the local field of stellar tangential velocities for a sample of 42,339 nonbinary Hipparcos stars with accurate parallaxes, using a vector spherical harmonic formalism. We derive simple relations between the parameters of the classical linear model (Ogorodnikov-Milne) of the local systemic field and low-degree terms of the general vector harmonic decomposition. Taking advantage of these relationships, we determine the solar velocity with respect to the local stars of (V(sub X), V(sub Y), V(sub Z)) (10.5, 18.5, 7.3) +/- 0.1 km s(exp -1) not corrected for the asymmetric drift with respect to the local standard of rest. If only stars more distant than 100 pc are considered, the peculiar solar motion is (V(sub X), V(sub Y), V(sub Z)) (9.9, 15.6, 6.9) +/- 0.2 km s(exp -1). The adverse effects of harmonic leakage, which occurs between the reflex solar motion represented by the three electric vector harmonics in the velocity space and higher degree harmonics in the proper-motion space, are eliminated in our analysis by direct subtraction of the reflex solar velocity in its tangential components for each star. The Oort parameters determined by a straightforward least-squares adjustment in vector spherical harmonics are A=14.0 +/- 1.4, B=13.1 +/- 1.2, K=1.1 +/- 1.8, and C=2.9 +/- 1.4 km s(exp -1) kpc(exp -1). The physical meaning and the implications of these parameters are discussed in the framework of a general linear model of the velocity field. We find a few statistically significant higher degree harmonic terms that do not correspond to any parameters in the classical linear model. One of them, a third-degree electric harmonic, is tentatively explained as the response to a negative linear gradient of rotation velocity with distance from the Galactic plane, which we estimate at approximately -20 km s(exp -1) kpc(exp -1). A similar vertical gradient of rotation velocity has been detected for more distant stars representing the thick disk (z greater than 1 kpc

Removal of envelope protein-free retroviral vectors by anion-exchange chromatography to improve product quality.

PubMed

Rodrigues, Teresa; Alves, Ana; Lopes, António; Carrondo, Manuel J T; Alves, Paula M; Cruz, Pedro E

2008-10-01

We have investigated the role of the retroviral lipid bilayer and envelope proteins in the adsorption of retroviral vectors (RVs) to a Fractogel DEAE matrix. Intact RVs and their degradation components (envelope protein-free vectors and solubilized vector components) were adsorbed to this matrix and eluted using a linear gradient. Envelope protein-free RVs (Env(-)) and soluble envelope proteins (gp70) eluted in a significantly lower range of conductivities than intact RVs (Env(+)) (13.7-30 mS/cm for Env(-) and gp70 proteins vs. 47-80 mS/cm for Env(+)). The zeta (zeta)-potential of Env(+) and Env(-) vectors was evaluated showing that envelope proteins define the pI of the viral particles (pI (Env(+)) < 2 versus 3 < pI (Env(-)) < 4) and that Env(+) and Env(-) vectors have similar zeta-potentials within pH 5 and 8. The results presented herein indicate that the adsorption of retroviral particles occurs through multi-point interaction of the envelope proteins with the cationic groups on the chromatographic matrix. The strength of this adsorption is thus dependent on the amount of envelope protein present in the viral lipid bilayer. In conclusion, AEXc enables the separation of gp70 proteins as well as envelope protein-free vectors constituting a significant improvement to the quality of retroviral preparations for gene therapy applications.

Emerging Vector-Borne Diseases – Incidence through Vectors

PubMed Central

Savić, Sara; Vidić, Branka; Grgić, Zivoslav; Potkonjak, Aleksandar; Spasojevic, Ljubica

2014-01-01

Vector-borne diseases use to be a major public health concern only in tropical and subtropical areas, but today they are an emerging threat for the continental and developed countries also. Nowadays, in intercontinental countries, there is a struggle with emerging diseases, which have found their way to appear through vectors. Vector-borne zoonotic diseases occur when vectors, animal hosts, climate conditions, pathogens, and susceptible human population exist at the same time, at the same place. Global climate change is predicted to lead to an increase in vector-borne infectious diseases and disease outbreaks. It could affect the range and population of pathogens, host and vectors, transmission season, etc. Reliable surveillance for diseases that are most likely to emerge is required. Canine vector-borne diseases represent a complex group of diseases including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, bartonellosis, borreliosis, dirofilariosis, ehrlichiosis, and leishmaniosis. Some of these diseases cause serious clinical symptoms in dogs and some of them have a zoonotic potential with an effect to public health. It is expected from veterinarians in coordination with medical doctors to play a fundamental role at primarily prevention and then treatment of vector-borne diseases in dogs. The One Health concept has to be integrated into the struggle against emerging diseases. During a 4-year period, from 2009 to 2013, a total number of 551 dog samples were analyzed for vector-borne diseases (borreliosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, dirofilariosis, and leishmaniasis) in routine laboratory work. The analysis was done by serological tests – ELISA for borreliosis, dirofilariosis, and leishmaniasis, modified Knott test for dirofilariosis, and blood smear for babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and anaplasmosis. This number of samples represented 75% of total number of samples that were sent for analysis for different diseases in dogs. Annually, on average more then half of the samples

Combining Step Gradients and Linear Gradients in Density.

PubMed

Kumar, Ashok A; Walz, Jenna A; Gonidec, Mathieu; Mace, Charles R; Whitesides, George M

2015-06-16

Combining aqueous multiphase systems (AMPS) and magnetic levitation (MagLev) provides a method to produce hybrid gradients in apparent density. AMPS—solutions of different polymers, salts, or surfactants that spontaneously separate into immiscible but predominantly aqueous phases—offer thermodynamically stable steps in density that can be tuned by the concentration of solutes. MagLev—the levitation of diamagnetic objects in a paramagnetic fluid within a magnetic field gradient—can be arranged to provide a near-linear gradient in effective density where the height of a levitating object above the surface of the magnet corresponds to its density; the strength of the gradient in effective density can be tuned by the choice of paramagnetic salt and its concentrations and by the strength and gradient in the magnetic field. Including paramagnetic salts (e.g., MnSO4 or MnCl2) in AMPS, and placing them in a magnetic field gradient, enables their use as media for MagLev. The potential to create large steps in density with AMPS allows separations of objects across a range of densities. The gradients produced by MagLev provide resolution over a continuous range of densities. By combining these approaches, mixtures of objects with large differences in density can be separated and analyzed simultaneously. Using MagLev to add an effective gradient in density also enables tuning the range of densities captured at an interface of an AMPS by simply changing the position of the container in the magnetic field. Further, by creating AMPS in which phases have different concentrations of paramagnetic ions, the phases can provide different resolutions in density. These results suggest that combining steps in density with gradients in density can enable new classes of separations based on density.

Multimodal image registration based on binary gradient angle descriptor.

PubMed

Jiang, Dongsheng; Shi, Yonghong; Yao, Demin; Fan, Yifeng; Wang, Manning; Song, Zhijian

2017-12-01

Multimodal image registration plays an important role in image-guided interventions/therapy and atlas building, and it is still a challenging task due to the complex intensity variations in different modalities. The paper addresses the problem and proposes a simple, compact, fast and generally applicable modality-independent binary gradient angle descriptor (BGA) based on the rationale of gradient orientation alignment. The BGA can be easily calculated at each voxel by coding the quadrant in which a local gradient vector falls, and it has an extremely low computational complexity, requiring only three convolutions, two multiplication operations and two comparison operations. Meanwhile, the binarized encoding of the gradient orientation makes the BGA more resistant to image degradations compared with conventional gradient orientation methods. The BGA can extract similar feature descriptors for different modalities and enable the use of simple similarity measures, which makes it applicable within a wide range of optimization frameworks. The results for pairwise multimodal and monomodal registrations between various images (T1, T2, PD, T1c, Flair) consistently show that the BGA significantly outperforms localized mutual information. The experimental results also confirm that the BGA can be a reliable alternative to the sum of absolute difference in monomodal image registration. The BGA can also achieve an accuracy of [Formula: see text], similar to that of the SSC, for the deformable registration of inhale and exhale CT scans. Specifically, for the highly challenging deformable registration of preoperative MRI and 3D intraoperative ultrasound images, the BGA achieves a similar registration accuracy of [Formula: see text] compared with state-of-the-art approaches, with a computation time of 18.3 s per case. The BGA improves the registration performance in terms of both accuracy and time efficiency. With further acceleration, the framework has the potential for

A fast pulse design for parallel excitation with gridding conjugate gradient.

PubMed

Feng, Shuo; Ji, Jim

2013-01-01

Parallel excitation (pTx) is recognized as a crucial technique in high field MRI to address the transmit field inhomogeneity problem. However, it can be time consuming to design pTx pulses which is not desirable. In this work, we propose a pulse design with gridding conjugate gradient (CG) based on the small-tip-angle approximation. The two major time consuming matrix-vector multiplications are substituted by two operators which involves with FFT and gridding only. Simulation results have shown that the proposed method is 3 times faster than conventional method and the memory cost is reduced by 1000 times.

Internal and external potential-field estimation from regional vector data at varying satellite altitude

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Plattner, Alain; Simons, Frederik J.

2017-10-01

When modelling satellite data to recover a global planetary magnetic or gravitational potential field, the method of choice remains their analysis in terms of spherical harmonics. When only regional data are available, or when data quality varies strongly with geographic location, the inversion problem becomes severely ill-posed. In those cases, adopting explicitly local methods is to be preferred over adapting global ones (e.g. by regularization). Here, we develop the theory behind a procedure to invert for planetary potential fields from vector observations collected within a spatially bounded region at varying satellite altitude. Our method relies on the construction of spatiospectrally localized bases of functions that mitigate the noise amplification caused by downward continuation (from the satellite altitude to the source) while balancing the conflicting demands for spatial concentration and spectral limitation. The `altitude-cognizant' gradient vector Slepian functions (AC-GVSF) enjoy a noise tolerance under downward continuation that is much improved relative to the `classical' gradient vector Slepian functions (CL-GVSF), which do not factor satellite altitude into their construction. Furthermore, venturing beyond the realm of their first application, published in a preceding paper, in the present article we extend the theory to being able to handle both internal and external potential-field estimation. Solving simultaneously for internal and external fields under the limitation of regional data availability reduces internal-field artefacts introduced by downward-continuing unmodelled external fields, as we show with numerical examples. We explain our solution strategies on the basis of analytic expressions for the behaviour of the estimation bias and variance of models for which signal and noise are uncorrelated, (essentially) space- and band-limited, and spectrally (almost) white. The AC-GVSF are optimal linear combinations of vector spherical harmonics

Three axis vector atomic magnetometer utilizing polarimetric technique

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Pradhan, Swarupananda, E-mail: spradhan@barc.gov.in, E-mail: pradhans75@gmail.com

2016-09-15

The three axis vector magnetic field measurement based on the interaction of a single elliptically polarized light beam with an atomic system is described. The magnetic field direction dependent atomic responses are extracted by the polarimetric detection in combination with laser frequency modulation and magnetic field modulation techniques. The magnetometer geometry offers additional critical requirements like compact size and large dynamic range for space application. Further, the three axis magnetic field is measured using only the reflected signal (one polarization component) from the polarimeter and thus can be easily expanded to make spatial array of detectors and/or high sensitivity fieldmore » gradient measurement as required for biomedical application.« less

Momentum-weighted conjugate gradient descent algorithm for gradient coil optimization.

PubMed

Lu, Hanbing; Jesmanowicz, Andrzej; Li, Shi-Jiang; Hyde, James S

2004-01-01

MRI gradient coil design is a type of nonlinear constrained optimization. A practical problem in transverse gradient coil design using the conjugate gradient descent (CGD) method is that wire elements move at different rates along orthogonal directions (r, phi, z), and tend to cross, breaking the constraints. A momentum-weighted conjugate gradient descent (MW-CGD) method is presented to overcome this problem. This method takes advantage of the efficiency of the CGD method combined with momentum weighting, which is also an intrinsic property of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, to adjust step sizes along the three orthogonal directions. A water-cooled, 12.8 cm inner diameter, three axis torque-balanced gradient coil for rat imaging was developed based on this method, with an efficiency of 2.13, 2.08, and 4.12 mT.m(-1).A(-1) along X, Y, and Z, respectively. Experimental data demonstrate that this method can improve efficiency by 40% and field uniformity by 27%. This method has also been applied to the design of a gradient coil for the human brain, employing remote current return paths. The benefits of this design include improved gradient field uniformity and efficiency, with a shorter length than gradient coil designs using coaxial return paths. Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Production and purification of non replicative canine adenovirus type 2 derived vectors.

PubMed

Szelechowski, Marion; Bergeron, Corinne; Gonzalez-Dunia, Daniel; Klonjkowski, Bernard

2013-12-03

Adenovirus (Ad) derived vectors have been widely used for short or long-term gene transfer, both for gene therapy and vaccine applications. Because of the frequent pre-existing immunity against the classically used human adenovirus type 5, canine adenovirus type 2 (CAV2) has been proposed as an alternative vector for human gene transfer. The well-characterized biology of CAV2, together with its ease of genetic manipulation, offer major advantages, notably for gene transfer into the central nervous system, or for inducing a wide range of protective immune responses, from humoral to cellular immunity. Nowadays, CAV2 represents one of the most appealing nonhuman adenovirus for use as a vaccine vector. This protocol describes a simple method to construct, produce and titer recombinant CAV2 vectors. After cloning the expression cassette of the gene of interest into a shuttle plasmid, the recombinant genomic plasmid is obtained by homologous recombination in the E. coli BJ5183 bacterial strain. The resulting genomic plasmid is then transfected into canine kidney cells expressing the complementing CAV2-E1 genes (DK-E1). A viral amplification enables the production of a large viral stock, which is purified by ultracentrifugation through cesium chloride gradients and desalted by dialysis. The resulting viral suspension routinely has a titer of over 10(10) infectious particles per ml and can be directly administrated in vivo.

Propagation properties of the chirped Airy beams through the gradient-index medium

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Liyan; Zhang, Jianbin; Pang, Zihao; Wang, Linyi; Zhong, Tianfen; Yang, Xiangbo; Deng, Dongmei

2017-11-01

Through analytical derivation and numerical analysis, the propagation properties of the chirped Airy(CAi) beams in the gradient-index medium are investigated. The intensity and the phase distributions, the propagation trajectory and the Poynting vector of the CAi beams are demonstrated to investigate the propagation properties. Owing to the special and symmetrical refractive index profile of the gradient-index medium, the CAi beams propagate periodically. The effects of the distribution factor and the chirped parameter on the propagation of the CAi beams are analyzed. As the increasing of the distribution factor, the intensity distribution of the CAi beams is more scattering. However, with the chirped parameter increasing, the focusing property of the CAi beams strengthens. The variation of the chirped parameter can change the position of the peak intensity maximum, but it cannot alter the period of the peak intensity. The variations of the initial phase and the energy of the beams in the transverse plane expedite accordingly.

Numerical study of comparison of vorticity and passive vectors in turbulence and inviscid flows

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ohkitani, Koji

2002-04-01

The nonlinear vortex stretching in incompressible Navier-Stokes turbulence is compared with a linear stretching process of passive vectors (PVs). In particular, we pay special attention to the difference of these processes under long and short time evolutions. For finite time evolution, we confirm our previous finding that the stretching effect of vorticity is weaker than that of general passive vectors for a majority of the initial conditions with the same energy spectra. The above difference can be explained qualitatively by examining the Biot-Savart formula. In order to see to what extent infinitesimal time development explains the above difference, we examine the probability density functions (PDFs) of the stretching rates of the passive vectors in the vicinity of a solution of Navier-Stokes equations. It is found that the PDFs are found to have a Gaussian distribution, suggesting that there are equally many PVs that stretched less and more than the vorticity. This suggests the importance of the vorticity-strain correlation built up over finite time in turbulence. We also discuss the case of Euler equations, where the dynamics of the Jacobian matrix relating the physical and material coordinates is examined numerically. A kind of alignment problem associated with the Cauchy-Green tensor is proposed and studied using the results of numerical simulations. It is found that vorticity tends to align itself with the most compressing eigenvector of the Cauchy-Green tensor. A two-dimensional counterpart of active-passive comparison is briefly studied. There is no essential difference between stretching of vorticity gradients and that of passive scalar gradients and a physical interpretation is given to it.

Are Bred Vectors The Same As Lyapunov Vectors?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalnay, E.; Corazza, M.; Cai, M.

Regional loss of predictability is an indication of the instability of the underlying flow, where small errors in the initial conditions (or imperfections in the model) grow to large amplitudes in finite times. The stability properties of evolving flows have been studied using Lyapunov vectors (e.g., Alligood et al, 1996, Ott, 1993, Kalnay, 2002), singular vectors (e.g., Lorenz, 1965, Farrell, 1988, Molteni and Palmer, 1993), and, more recently, with bred vectors (e.g., Szunyogh et al, 1997, Cai et al, 2001). Bred vectors (BVs) are, by construction, closely related to Lyapunov vectors (LVs). In fact, after an infinitely long breeding time, and with the use of infinitesimal ampli- tudes, bred vectors are identical to leading Lyapunov vectors. In practical applications, however, bred vectors are different from Lyapunov vectors in two important ways: a) bred vectors are never globally orthogonalized and are intrinsically local in space and time, and b) they are finite-amplitude, finite-time vectors. These two differences are very significant in a dynamical system whose size is very large. For example, the at- mosphere is large enough to have "room" for several synoptic scale instabilities (e.g., storms) to develop independently in different regions (say, North America and Aus- tralia), and it is complex enough to have several different possible types of instabilities (such as barotropic, baroclinic, convective, and even Brownian motion). Bred vectors share some of their properties with leading LVs (Corazza et al, 2001a, 2001b, Toth and Kalnay, 1993, 1997, Cai et al, 2001). For example, 1) Bred vectors are independent of the norm used to define the size of the perturba- tion. Corazza et al. (2001) showed that bred vectors obtained using a potential enstro- phy norm were indistinguishable from bred vectors obtained using a streamfunction squared norm, in contrast with singular vectors. 2) Bred vectors are independent of the length of the rescaling period as long as the

Analytic energy gradients for the coupled-cluster singles and doubles method with the density-fitting approximation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bozkaya, Uğur, E-mail: ugur.bozkaya@hacettepe.edu.tr; Department of Chemistry, Atatürk University, Erzurum 25240; Sherrill, C. David

2016-05-07

An efficient implementation is presented for analytic gradients of the coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) method with the density-fitting approximation, denoted DF-CCSD. Frozen core terms are also included. When applied to a set of alkanes, the DF-CCSD analytic gradients are significantly accelerated compared to conventional CCSD for larger molecules. The efficiency of our DF-CCSD algorithm arises from the acceleration of several different terms, which are designated as the “gradient terms”: computation of particle density matrices (PDMs), generalized Fock-matrix (GFM), solution of the Z-vector equation, formation of the relaxed PDMs and GFM, back-transformation of PDMs and GFM to the atomic orbitalmore » (AO) basis, and evaluation of gradients in the AO basis. For the largest member of the alkane set (C{sub 10}H{sub 22}), the computational times for the gradient terms (with the cc-pVTZ basis set) are 2582.6 (CCSD) and 310.7 (DF-CCSD) min, respectively, a speed up of more than 8-folds. For gradient related terms, the DF approach avoids the usage of four-index electron repulsion integrals. Based on our previous study [U. Bozkaya, J. Chem. Phys. 141, 124108 (2014)], our formalism completely avoids construction or storage of the 4-index two-particle density matrix (TPDM), using instead 2- and 3-index TPDMs. The DF approach introduces negligible errors for equilibrium bond lengths and harmonic vibrational frequencies.« less

Principal fiber bundle description of number scaling for scalars and vectors: application to gauge theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benioff, Paul

2015-05-01

The purpose of this paper is to put the description of number scaling and its effects on physics and geometry on a firmer foundation, and to make it more understandable. A main point is that two different concepts, number and number value are combined in the usual representations of number structures. This is valid as long as just one structure of each number type is being considered. It is not valid when different structures of each number type are being considered. Elements of base sets of number structures, considered by themselves, have no meaning. They acquire meaning or value as elements of a number structure. Fiber bundles over a space or space time manifold, M, are described. The fiber consists of a collection of many real or complex number structures and vector space structures. The structures are parameterized by a real or complex scaling factor, s. A vector space at a fiber level, s, has, as scalars, real or complex number structures at the same level. Connections are described that relate scalar and vector space structures at both neighbor M locations and at neighbor scaling levels. Scalar and vector structure valued fields are described and covariant derivatives of these fields are obtained. Two complex vector fields, each with one real and one imaginary field, appear, with one complex field associated with positions in M and the other with position dependent scaling factors. A derivation of the covariant derivative for scalar and vector valued fields gives the same vector fields. The derivation shows that the complex vector field associated with scaling fiber levels is the gradient of a complex scalar field. Use of these results in gauge theory shows that the imaginary part of the vector field associated with M positions acts like the electromagnetic field. The physical relevance of the other three fields, if any, is not known.

Can invertebrates see the e-vector of polarization as a separate modality of light?

PubMed

Labhart, Thomas

2016-12-15

The visual world is rich in linearly polarized light stimuli, which are hidden from the human eye. But many invertebrate species make use of polarized light as a source of valuable visual information. However, exploiting light polarization does not necessarily imply that the electric (e)-vector orientation of polarized light can be perceived as a separate modality of light. In this Review, I address the question of whether invertebrates can detect specific e-vector orientations in a manner similar to that of humans perceiving spectral stimuli as specific hues. To analyze e-vector orientation, the signals of at least three polarization-sensitive sensors (analyzer channels) with different e-vector tuning axes must be compared. The object-based, imaging polarization vision systems of cephalopods and crustaceans, as well as the water-surface detectors of flying backswimmers, use just two analyzer channels. Although this excludes the perception of specific e-vector orientations, a two-channel system does provide a coarse, categoric analysis of polarized light stimuli, comparable to the limited color sense of dichromatic, 'color-blind' humans. The celestial compass of insects employs three or more analyzer channels. However, that compass is multimodal, i.e. e-vector information merges with directional information from other celestial cues, such as the solar azimuth and the spectral gradient in the sky, masking e-vector information. It seems that invertebrate organisms take no interest in the polarization details of visual stimuli, but polarization vision grants more practical benefits, such as improved object detection and visual communication for cephalopods and crustaceans, compass readings to traveling insects, or the alert 'water below!' to water-seeking bugs. © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Can invertebrates see the e-vector of polarization as a separate modality of light?

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT The visual world is rich in linearly polarized light stimuli, which are hidden from the human eye. But many invertebrate species make use of polarized light as a source of valuable visual information. However, exploiting light polarization does not necessarily imply that the electric (e)-vector orientation of polarized light can be perceived as a separate modality of light. In this Review, I address the question of whether invertebrates can detect specific e-vector orientations in a manner similar to that of humans perceiving spectral stimuli as specific hues. To analyze e-vector orientation, the signals of at least three polarization-sensitive sensors (analyzer channels) with different e-vector tuning axes must be compared. The object-based, imaging polarization vision systems of cephalopods and crustaceans, as well as the water-surface detectors of flying backswimmers, use just two analyzer channels. Although this excludes the perception of specific e-vector orientations, a two-channel system does provide a coarse, categoric analysis of polarized light stimuli, comparable to the limited color sense of dichromatic, ‘color-blind’ humans. The celestial compass of insects employs three or more analyzer channels. However, that compass is multimodal, i.e. e-vector information merges with directional information from other celestial cues, such as the solar azimuth and the spectral gradient in the sky, masking e-vector information. It seems that invertebrate organisms take no interest in the polarization details of visual stimuli, but polarization vision grants more practical benefits, such as improved object detection and visual communication for cephalopods and crustaceans, compass readings to traveling insects, or the alert ‘water below!’ to water-seeking bugs. PMID:27974532

Stabilization of lower hybrid drift modes by finite parallel wavenumber and electron temperature gradients in field-reversed configurations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farengo, R.; Guzdar, P. N.; Lee, Y. C.

1989-08-01

The effect of finite parallel wavenumber and electron temperature gradients on the lower hybrid drift instability is studied in the parameter regime corresponding to the TRX-2 device [Fusion Technol. 9, 48 (1986)]. Perturbations in the electrostatic potential and all three components of the vector potential are considered and finite beta electron orbit modifications are included. The electron temperature gradient decreases the growth rate of the instability but, for kz=0, unstable modes exist for ηe(=T'en0/Ten0)>6. Since finite kz effects completely stabilize the mode at small values of kz/ky(≂5×10-3), magnetic shear could be responsible for stabilizing the lower hybrid drift instability in field-reversed configurations.

Inferring Lower Boundary Driving Conditions Using Vector Magnetic Field Observations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schuck, Peter W.; Linton, Mark; Leake, James; MacNeice, Peter; Allred, Joel

2012-01-01

Low-beta coronal MHD simulations of realistic CME events require the detailed specification of the magnetic fields, velocities, densities, temperatures, etc., in the low corona. Presently, the most accurate estimates of solar vector magnetic fields are made in the high-beta photosphere. Several techniques have been developed that provide accurate estimates of the associated photospheric plasma velocities such as the Differential Affine Velocity Estimator for Vector Magnetograms and the Poloidal/Toroidal Decomposition. Nominally, these velocities are consistent with the evolution of the radial magnetic field. To evolve the tangential magnetic field radial gradients must be specified. In addition to estimating the photospheric vector magnetic and velocity fields, a further challenge involves incorporating these fields into an MHD simulation. The simulation boundary must be driven, consistent with the numerical boundary equations, with the goal of accurately reproducing the observed magnetic fields and estimated velocities at some height within the simulation. Even if this goal is achieved, many unanswered questions remain. How can the photospheric magnetic fields and velocities be propagated to the low corona through the transition region? At what cadence must we observe the photosphere to realistically simulate the corona? How do we model the magnetic fields and plasma velocities in the quiet Sun? How sensitive are the solutions to other unknowns that must be specified, such as the global solar magnetic field, and the photospheric temperature and density?

Vector Addition: Effect of the Context and Position of the Vectors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barniol, Pablo; Zavala, Genaro

2010-10-01

In this article we investigate the effect of: 1) the context, and 2) the position of the vectors, on 2D vector addition tasks. We administered a test to 512 students completing introductory physics courses at a private Mexican university. In the first part, we analyze students' responses in three isomorphic problems: displacements, forces, and no physical context. Students were asked to draw two vectors and the vector sum. We analyzed students' procedures detecting the difficulties when drawing the vector addition and proved that the context matters, not only compared to the context-free case but also between the contexts. In the second part, we analyze students' responses with three different arrangements of the sum of two vectors: tail-to-tail, head-to-tail and separated vectors. We compared the frequencies of the errors in the three different positions to deduce students' conceptions in the addition of vectors.

Application of Support Vector Machine to Forex Monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kamruzzaman, Joarder; Sarker, Ruhul A.

Previous studies have demonstrated superior performance of artificial neural network (ANN) based forex forecasting models over traditional regression models. This paper applies support vector machines to build a forecasting model from the historical data using six simple technical indicators and presents a comparison with an ANN based model trained by scaled conjugate gradient (SCG) learning algorithm. The models are evaluated and compared on the basis of five commonly used performance metrics that measure closeness of prediction as well as correctness in directional change. Forecasting results of six different currencies against Australian dollar reveal superior performance of SVM model using simple linear kernel over ANN-SCG model in terms of all the evaluation metrics. The effect of SVM parameter selection on prediction performance is also investigated and analyzed.

A Multi-Gradient Generator in a Single Microfluidic Device for Optical Microscopy and Interferometry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bedrossian, Manuel; Nadeau, Jay; Lindensmith, Chris

2016-11-01

The goal of this work was to create a single microfluidic device capable of establishing multiple types of gradients in a quantifiable manner. Many microbial species are known to exhibit directed motility in the presence of stimuli. This phenomenon, known as taxis, can be used as a bio-signature and a means of identifying microorganisms. Directed microbial motility has been seen as a response to the presence of certain chemicals, light, heat, magnetic fields, and other stimuli. Microbial movement along the gradient vector, that cannot be explained by passive hydrodynamics or Brownian motion, can shed light on whether the sample contains living microbes or not. The ability to create multiple types of gradients in a single microfluidic device allows for high throughput testing of heterogeneous samples to detect taxis. There has been increased interest in the search for life within our solar system where liquid water is known to exist. Induced directional motility can serve as a viable method for detecting living organisms that actively respond to their environment. The device developed here includes a chemical, photonic, thermal, and magnetic gradient generator, while maintaining high optical quality in order to be used for microscopy as well as quantitative phase imaging This work was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, who the authors wish to thank for their generosity.

No-reference image quality assessment based on natural scene statistics and gradient magnitude similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jia, Huizhen; Sun, Quansen; Ji, Zexuan; Wang, Tonghan; Chen, Qiang

2014-11-01

The goal of no-reference/blind image quality assessment (NR-IQA) is to devise a perceptual model that can accurately predict the quality of a distorted image as human opinions, in which feature extraction is an important issue. However, the features used in the state-of-the-art "general purpose" NR-IQA algorithms are usually natural scene statistics (NSS) based or are perceptually relevant; therefore, the performance of these models is limited. To further improve the performance of NR-IQA, we propose a general purpose NR-IQA algorithm which combines NSS-based features with perceptually relevant features. The new method extracts features in both the spatial and gradient domains. In the spatial domain, we extract the point-wise statistics for single pixel values which are characterized by a generalized Gaussian distribution model to form the underlying features. In the gradient domain, statistical features based on neighboring gradient magnitude similarity are extracted. Then a mapping is learned to predict quality scores using a support vector regression. The experimental results on the benchmark image databases demonstrate that the proposed algorithm correlates highly with human judgments of quality and leads to significant performance improvements over state-of-the-art methods.

Covariantized vector Galileons

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hull, Matthew; Koyama, Kazuya; Tasinato, Gianmassimo

2016-03-01

Vector Galileons are ghost-free systems containing higher derivative interactions of vector fields. They break the vector gauge symmetry, and the dynamics of the longitudinal vector polarizations acquire a Galileon symmetry in an appropriate decoupling limit in Minkowski space. Using an Arnowitt-Deser-Misner approach, we carefully reconsider the coupling with gravity of vector Galileons, with the aim of studying the necessary conditions to avoid the propagation of ghosts. We develop arguments that put on a more solid footing the results previously obtained in the literature. Moreover, working in analogy with the scalar counterpart, we find indications for the existence of a "beyond Horndeski" theory involving vector degrees of freedom that avoids the propagation of ghosts thanks to secondary constraints. In addition, we analyze a Higgs mechanism for generating vector Galileons through spontaneous symmetry breaking, and we present its consistent covariantization.

Regional and seasonal response of a West Nile virus vector to climate change.

PubMed

Morin, Cory W; Comrie, Andrew C

2013-09-24

Climate change will affect the abundance and seasonality of West Nile virus (WNV) vectors, altering the risk of virus transmission to humans. Using downscaled general circulation model output, we calculate a WNV vector's response to climate change across the southern United States using process-based modeling. In the eastern United States, Culex quinquefasciatus response to projected climate change displays a latitudinal and elevational gradient. Projected summer population depressions as a result of increased immature mortality and habitat drying are most severe in the south and almost absent further north; extended spring and fall survival is ubiquitous. Much of California also exhibits a bimodal pattern. Projected onset of mosquito season is delayed in the southwestern United States because of extremely dry and hot spring and summers; however, increased temperature and late summer and fall rains extend the mosquito season. These results are unique in being a broad-scale calculation of the projected impacts of climate change on a WNV vector. The results show that, despite projected widespread future warming, the future seasonal response of C. quinquefasciatus populations across the southern United States will not be homogeneous, and will depend on specific combinations of local and regional conditions.

A fast, preconditioned conjugate gradient Toeplitz solver

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pan, Victor; Schrieber, Robert

1989-01-01

A simple factorization is given of an arbitrary hermitian, positive definite matrix in which the factors are well-conditioned, hermitian, and positive definite. In fact, given knowledge of the extreme eigenvalues of the original matrix A, an optimal improvement can be achieved, making the condition numbers of each of the two factors equal to the square root of the condition number of A. This technique is to applied to the solution of hermitian, positive definite Toeplitz systems. Large linear systems with hermitian, positive definite Toeplitz matrices arise in some signal processing applications. A stable fast algorithm is given for solving these systems that is based on the preconditioned conjugate gradient method. The algorithm exploits Toeplitz structure to reduce the cost of an iteration to O(n log n) by applying the fast Fourier Transform to compute matrix-vector products. Matrix factorization is used as a preconditioner.

Content-based unconstrained color logo and trademark retrieval with color edge gradient co-occurrence histograms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Phan, Raymond; Androutsos, Dimitrios

2008-01-01

In this paper, we present a logo and trademark retrieval system for unconstrained color image databases that extends the Color Edge Co-occurrence Histogram (CECH) object detection scheme. We introduce more accurate information to the CECH, by virtue of incorporating color edge detection using vector order statistics. This produces a more accurate representation of edges in color images, in comparison to the simple color pixel difference classification of edges as seen in the CECH. Our proposed method is thus reliant on edge gradient information, and as such, we call this the Color Edge Gradient Co-occurrence Histogram (CEGCH). We use this as the main mechanism for our unconstrained color logo and trademark retrieval scheme. Results illustrate that the proposed retrieval system retrieves logos and trademarks with good accuracy, and outperforms the CECH object detection scheme with higher precision and recall.

Solving large test-day models by iteration on data and preconditioned conjugate gradient.

PubMed

Lidauer, M; Strandén, I; Mäntysaari, E A; Pösö, J; Kettunen, A

1999-12-01

A preconditioned conjugate gradient method was implemented into an iteration on a program for data estimation of breeding values, and its convergence characteristics were studied. An algorithm was used as a reference in which one fixed effect was solved by Gauss-Seidel method, and other effects were solved by a second-order Jacobi method. Implementation of the preconditioned conjugate gradient required storing four vectors (size equal to number of unknowns in the mixed model equations) in random access memory and reading the data at each round of iteration. The preconditioner comprised diagonal blocks of the coefficient matrix. Comparison of algorithms was based on solutions of mixed model equations obtained by a single-trait animal model and a single-trait, random regression test-day model. Data sets for both models used milk yield records of primiparous Finnish dairy cows. Animal model data comprised 665,629 lactation milk yields and random regression test-day model data of 6,732,765 test-day milk yields. Both models included pedigree information of 1,099,622 animals. The animal model ¿random regression test-day model¿ required 122 ¿305¿ rounds of iteration to converge with the reference algorithm, but only 88 ¿149¿ were required with the preconditioned conjugate gradient. To solve the random regression test-day model with the preconditioned conjugate gradient required 237 megabytes of random access memory and took 14% of the computation time needed by the reference algorithm.

Blind separation of positive sources by globally convergent gradient search.

PubMed

Oja, Erkki; Plumbley, Mark

2004-09-01

The instantaneous noise-free linear mixing model in independent component analysis is largely a solved problem under the usual assumption of independent nongaussian sources and full column rank mixing matrix. However, with some prior information on the sources, like positivity, new analysis and perhaps simplified solution methods may yet become possible. In this letter, we consider the task of independent component analysis when the independent sources are known to be nonnegative and well grounded, which means that they have a nonzero pdf in the region of zero. It can be shown that in this case, the solution method is basically very simple: an orthogonal rotation of the whitened observation vector into nonnegative outputs will give a positive permutation of the original sources. We propose a cost function whose minimum coincides with nonnegativity and derive the gradient algorithm under the whitening constraint, under which the separating matrix is orthogonal. We further prove that in the Stiefel manifold of orthogonal matrices, the cost function is a Lyapunov function for the matrix gradient flow, implying global convergence. Thus, this algorithm is guaranteed to find the nonnegative well-grounded independent sources. The analysis is complemented by a numerical simulation, which illustrates the algorithm.

Purification of adenoviral vectors by combined anion exchange and gel filtration chromatography.

PubMed

Eglon, Marc N; Duffy, Aoife M; O'Brien, Timothy; Strappe, Padraig M

2009-11-01

Adenoviral vectors are used extensively in human gene therapy trials and in vaccine development. Large-scale GMP production requires a downstream purification process, and liquid chromatography is emerging as the most powerful mode of purification, enabling the production of vectors at a clinically relevant scale and quality. The present study describes the development of a two-step high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) process combining anion exchange (AIEX) and gel filtration (GF) in comparison with the caesium chloride density gradient method. HEK-293 cells were cultured in ten-layer CellStacks() and infected with 10 pfu/cell of adenoviral vector expressing green fluorescent protein (Ad5-GFP). Cell-bound virus was harvested and benzonase added to digest DNA, crude lysate was clarified by centrifugation and filtration prior to HPLC. Chromatography fractions were added to HEK-293 cells and GFP expression measured using a fluorescent plate reader. Using AIEX then GF resulted in an adenoviral vector with purity comparable to Ad5-GFP purified by CsCl, whereas the reverse process (GF-AIEX) showed a reduced purity by electrophoresis and required further buffer exchange of the product. The optimal process (AIEX-GF) resulted in a vector yield of 2.3 x 10(7) pfu/cm(2) of cell culture harvested compared to 3.3 x 10(7) pfu/cm(2) for CsCl. The process recovery for the HPLC process was 36% compared to 27.5% for CsCl and total virion to infectious particle ratios of 18 and 11, respectively, were measured. We present a simple two-step chromatography process that is capable of producing high-quality adenovirus at a titre suitable for scale-up and clinical translation.

Host Life History Strategy, Species Diversity, and Habitat Influence Trypanosoma cruzi Vector Infection in Changing Landscapes

PubMed Central

Gottdenker, Nicole L.; Chaves, Luis Fernando; Calzada, José E.; Saldaña, Azael; Carroll, C. Ronald

2012-01-01

Background Anthropogenic land use may influence transmission of multi-host vector-borne pathogens by changing diversity, relative abundance, and community composition of reservoir hosts. These reservoir hosts may have varying competence for vector-borne pathogens depending on species-specific characteristics, such as life history strategy. The objective of this study is to evaluate how anthropogenic land use change influences blood meal species composition and the effects of changing blood meal species composition on the parasite infection rate of the Chagas disease vector Rhodnius pallescens in Panama. Methodology/Principal Findings R. pallescens vectors (N = 643) were collected in different habitat types across a gradient of anthropogenic disturbance. Blood meal species in DNA extracted from these vectors was identified in 243 (40.3%) vectors by amplification and sequencing of a vertebrate-specific fragment of the 12SrRNA gene, and T. cruzi vector infection was determined by pcr. Vector infection rate was significantly greater in deforested habitats as compared to contiguous forests. Forty-two different species of blood meal were identified in R. pallescens, and species composition of blood meals varied across habitat types. Mammals (88.3%) dominated R. pallescens blood meals. Xenarthrans (sloths and tamanduas) were the most frequently identified species in blood meals across all habitat types. A regression tree analysis indicated that blood meal species diversity, host life history strategy (measured as rmax, the maximum intrinsic rate of population increase), and habitat type (forest fragments and peridomiciliary sites) were important determinants of vector infection with T. cruzi. The mean intrinsic rate of increase and the skewness and variability of rmax were positively associated with higher vector infection rate at a site. Conclusions/Significance In this study, anthropogenic landscape disturbance increased vector infection with T. cruzi, potentially

Gradient Driven Fluctuations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cannell, David

2005-01-01

We have worked with our collaborators at the University of Milan (Professor Marzio Giglio and his group-supported by ASI) to define the science required to measure gradient driven fluctuations in the microgravity environment. Such a study would provide an accurate test of the extent to which the theory of fluctuating hydrodynamics can be used to predict the properties of fluids maintained in a stressed, non-equilibrium state. As mentioned above, the results should also provide direct visual insight into the behavior of a variety of fluid systems containing gradients or interfaces, when placed in the microgravity environment. With support from the current grant, we have identified three key systems for detailed investigation. These three systems are: 1) A single-component fluid to be studied in the presence of a temperature gradient; 2) A mixture of two organic liquids to be studied both in the presence of a temperature gradient, which induces a steady-state concentration gradient, and with the temperature gradient removed, but while the concentration gradient is dying by means of diffusion; 3) Various pairs of liquids undergoing free diffusion, including a proteidbuffer solution and pairs of mixtures having different concentrations, to allow us to vary the differences in fluid properties in a controlled manner.

Versatile generation of optical vector fields and vector beams using a non-interferometric approach.

PubMed

Tripathi, Santosh; Toussaint, Kimani C

2012-05-07

We present a versatile, non-interferometric method for generating vector fields and vector beams which can produce all the states of polarization represented on a higher-order Poincaré sphere. The versatility and non-interferometric nature of this method is expected to enable exploration of various exotic properties of vector fields and vector beams. To illustrate this, we study the propagation properties of some vector fields and find that, in general, propagation alters both their intensity and polarization distribution, and more interestingly, converts some vector fields into vector beams. In the article, we also suggest a modified Jones vector formalism to represent vector fields and vector beams.

Rotating-frame gradient fields for magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear magnetic resonance in low fields

DOEpatents

Bouchard, Louis-Serge; Pines, Alexander; Demas, Vasiliki

2014-01-21

A system and method for Fourier encoding a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal is disclosed. A static magnetic field B.sub.0 is provided along a first direction. An NMR signal from the sample is Fourier encoded by applying a rotating-frame gradient field B.sub.G superimposed on the B.sub.0, where the B.sub.G comprises a vector component rotating in a plane perpendicular to the first direction at an angular frequency .omega.in a laboratory frame. The Fourier-encoded NMR signal is detected.

Leishmania amazonensis chemotaxis under glucose gradient studied by the strength and directionality of forces measured with optical tweezers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

de Ysasa Pozzo, Liliana; Fontes, Adriana; de Thomaz, André A.; Barbosa, Luiz Carlos; Ayres, Diana Copi; Giorgio, Selma; Cesar, Carlos Lenz

2007-02-01

Chemotaxis is the mechanism microorganisms use to sense the environment surrounding them and to direct their movement towards attractive, or away from the repellent, chemicals. The biochemical sensing is almost the only way for communication between unicellular organisms. Prokaryote and Eukaryote chemotaxis has been mechanically studied mainly by observing the directionality and timing of the microorganisms movements subjected to a chemical gradient, but not through the directionality and strength of the forces it generates. To observe the vector force of microorganisms under a chemical gradient we developed a system composed of two large chambers connected by a tiny duct capable to keep the chemical gradient constant for more than ten hours. We also used the displacements of a microsphere trapped in an Optical Tweezers as the force transducer to measure the direction and the strength of the propulsion forces of flagellum of the microorganism under several gradient conditions. A 9μm diameter microsphere particle was trapped with a Nd:YAG laser and its movement was measured through the light scattered focused on a quadrant detector. We observed the behavior of the protozoa Leishmania amazonensis (eukaryote) under several glucose gradients. This protozoa senses the gradient around it by swimming in circles for three to five times following by tumbling, and not by the typical straight swimming/tumbling of bacteria. Our results also suggest that force direction and strength are also used to control its movement, not only the timing of swimming/tumbling, because we observed a higher force strength clearly directed towards the glucose gradient.

Gene therapy using retrovirus vectors: vector development and biosafety at clinical trials.

PubMed

Doi, Knayo; Takeuchi, Yasuhiro

2015-01-01

Retrovirus vectors (gammaretroviral and lentiviral vectors) have been considered as promising tools to transfer therapeutic genes into patient cells because they can permanently integrate into host cellular genome. To treat monogenic, inherited diseases, retroviral vectors have been used to add correct genes into patient cells. Conventional gammaretroviral vectors achieved successful results in clinical trials: treated patients had therapeutic gene expression in target cells and had improved symptoms of diseases. However, serious side-effects of leukemia occurred, caused by retroviral insertional mutagenesis (IM). These incidences stressed the importance of monitoring vector integration sites in patient cells as well as of re-consideration on safer vectors. More recently lentiviral vectors which can deliver genes into non-dividing cells started to be used in clinical trials including neurological disorders, showing their efficacy. Vector integration site analysis revealed that lentiviruses integrate less likely to near promoter regions of oncogenes than gammaretroviruses and no adverse events have been reported in lentiviral vector-mediated gene therapy clinical trials. Therefore lentiviral vectors have promises to be applied to a wide range of common diseases in near future. For example, T cells from cancer patients were transduced to express chimeric T cell receptors recognizing their tumour cells enhancing patients' anti-cancer immunity.

Monthly evaporation forecasting using artificial neural networks and support vector machines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tezel, Gulay; Buyukyildiz, Meral

2016-04-01

Evaporation is one of the most important components of the hydrological cycle, but is relatively difficult to estimate, due to its complexity, as it can be influenced by numerous factors. Estimation of evaporation is important for the design of reservoirs, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Artificial neural network methods and support vector machines (SVM) are frequently utilized to estimate evaporation and other hydrological variables. In this study, usability of artificial neural networks (ANNs) (multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function network (RBFN)) and ɛ-support vector regression (SVR) artificial intelligence methods was investigated to estimate monthly pan evaporation. For this aim, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and precipitation data for the period 1972 to 2005 from Beysehir meteorology station were used as input variables while pan evaporation values were used as output. The Romanenko and Meyer method was also considered for the comparison. The results were compared with observed class A pan evaporation data. In MLP method, four different training algorithms, gradient descent with momentum and adaptive learning rule backpropagation (GDX), Levenberg-Marquardt (LVM), scaled conjugate gradient (SCG), and resilient backpropagation (RBP), were used. Also, ɛ-SVR model was used as SVR model. The models were designed via 10-fold cross-validation (CV); algorithm performance was assessed via mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), and coefficient of determination (R 2). According to the performance criteria, the ANN algorithms and ɛ-SVR had similar results. The ANNs and ɛ-SVR methods were found to perform better than the Romanenko and Meyer methods. Consequently, the best performance using the test data was obtained using SCG(4,2,2,1) with R 2 = 0.905.

Insulated Foamy Viral Vectors

PubMed Central

Browning, Diana L.; Collins, Casey P.; Hocum, Jonah D.; Leap, David J.; Rae, Dustin T.; Trobridge, Grant D.

2016-01-01

Retroviral vector-mediated gene therapy is promising, but genotoxicity has limited its use in the clinic. Genotoxicity is highly dependent on the retroviral vector used, and foamy viral (FV) vectors appear relatively safe. However, internal promoters may still potentially activate nearby genes. We developed insulated FV vectors, using four previously described insulators: a version of the well-studied chicken hypersensitivity site 4 insulator (650cHS4), two synthetic CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF)-based insulators, and an insulator based on the CCAAT box-binding transcription factor/nuclear factor I (7xCTF/NF1). We directly compared these insulators for enhancer-blocking activity, effect on FV vector titer, and fidelity of transfer to both proviral long terminal repeats. The synthetic CTCF-based insulators had the strongest insulating activity, but reduced titers significantly. The 7xCTF/NF1 insulator did not reduce titers but had weak insulating activity. The 650cHS4-insulated FV vector was identified as the overall most promising vector. Uninsulated and 650cHS4-insulated FV vectors were both significantly less genotoxic than gammaretroviral vectors. Integration sites were evaluated in cord blood CD34+ cells and the 650cHS4-insulated FV vector had fewer hotspots compared with an uninsulated FV vector. These data suggest that insulated FV vectors are promising for hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy. PMID:26715244

Effect of handling characteristics on minimum time cornering with torque vectoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, E. N.; Velenis, E.; Tavernini, D.; Cao, D.

2018-02-01

In this paper, the effect of both passive and actively-modified vehicle handling characteristics on minimum time manoeuvring for vehicles with 4-wheel torque vectoring (TV) capability is studied. First, a baseline optimal TV strategy is sought, independent of any causal control law. An optimal control problem (OCP) is initially formulated considering 4 independent wheel torque inputs, together with the steering angle rate, as the control variables. Using this formulation, the performance benefit using TV against an electric drive train with a fixed torque distribution, is demonstrated. The sensitivity of TV-controlled manoeuvre time to the passive understeer gradient of the vehicle is then studied. A second formulation of the OCP is introduced where a closed-loop TV controller is incorporated into the system dynamics of the OCP. This formulation allows the effect of actively modifying a vehicle's handling characteristic via TV on its minimum time cornering performance of the vehicle to be assessed. In particular, the effect of the target understeer gradient as the key tuning parameter of the literature-standard steady-state linear single-track model yaw rate reference is analysed.

On efficient randomized algorithms for finding the PageRank vector

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gasnikov, A. V.; Dmitriev, D. Yu.

2015-03-01

Two randomized methods are considered for finding the PageRank vector; in other words, the solution of the system p T = p T P with a stochastic n × n matrix P, where n ˜ 107-109, is sought (in the class of probability distributions) with accuracy ɛ: ɛ ≫ n -1. Thus, the possibility of brute-force multiplication of P by the column is ruled out in the case of dense objects. The first method is based on the idea of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. This approach is efficient when the iterative process p {/t+1 T} = p {/t T} P quickly reaches a steady state. Additionally, it takes into account another specific feature of P, namely, the nonzero off-diagonal elements of P are equal in rows (this property is used to organize a random walk over the graph with the matrix P). Based on modern concentration-of-measure inequalities, new bounds for the running time of this method are presented that take into account the specific features of P. In the second method, the search for a ranking vector is reduced to finding the equilibrium in the antagonistic matrix game where S n (1) is a unit simplex in ℝ n and I is the identity matrix. The arising problem is solved by applying a slightly modified Grigoriadis-Khachiyan algorithm (1995). This technique, like the Nazin-Polyak method (2009), is a randomized version of Nemirovski's mirror descent method. The difference is that randomization in the Grigoriadis-Khachiyan algorithm is used when the gradient is projected onto the simplex rather than when the stochastic gradient is computed. For sparse matrices P, the method proposed yields noticeably better results.

Solving large mixed linear models using preconditioned conjugate gradient iteration.

PubMed

Strandén, I; Lidauer, M

1999-12-01

Continuous evaluation of dairy cattle with a random regression test-day model requires a fast solving method and algorithm. A new computing technique feasible in Jacobi and conjugate gradient based iterative methods using iteration on data is presented. In the new computing technique, the calculations in multiplication of a vector by a matrix were recorded to three steps instead of the commonly used two steps. The three-step method was implemented in a general mixed linear model program that used preconditioned conjugate gradient iteration. Performance of this program in comparison to other general solving programs was assessed via estimation of breeding values using univariate, multivariate, and random regression test-day models. Central processing unit time per iteration with the new three-step technique was, at best, one-third that needed with the old technique. Performance was best with the test-day model, which was the largest and most complex model used. The new program did well in comparison to other general software. Programs keeping the mixed model equations in random access memory required at least 20 and 435% more time to solve the univariate and multivariate animal models, respectively. Computations of the second best iteration on data took approximately three and five times longer for the animal and test-day models, respectively, than did the new program. Good performance was due to fast computing time per iteration and quick convergence to the final solutions. Use of preconditioned conjugate gradient based methods in solving large breeding value problems is supported by our findings.

Joint Smoothed l₀-Norm DOA Estimation Algorithm for Multiple Measurement Vectors in MIMO Radar.

PubMed

Liu, Jing; Zhou, Weidong; Juwono, Filbert H

2017-05-08

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is usually confronted with a multiple measurement vector (MMV) case. In this paper, a novel fast sparse DOA estimation algorithm, named the joint smoothed l 0 -norm algorithm, is proposed for multiple measurement vectors in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. To eliminate the white or colored Gaussian noises, the new method first obtains a low-complexity high-order cumulants based data matrix. Then, the proposed algorithm designs a joint smoothed function tailored for the MMV case, based on which joint smoothed l 0 -norm sparse representation framework is constructed. Finally, for the MMV-based joint smoothed function, the corresponding gradient-based sparse signal reconstruction is designed, thus the DOA estimation can be achieved. The proposed method is a fast sparse representation algorithm, which can solve the MMV problem and perform well for both white and colored Gaussian noises. The proposed joint algorithm is about two orders of magnitude faster than the l 1 -norm minimization based methods, such as l 1 -SVD (singular value decomposition), RV (real-valued) l 1 -SVD and RV l 1 -SRACV (sparse representation array covariance vectors), and achieves better DOA estimation performance.

PRECONDITIONED CONJUGATE-GRADIENT 2 (PCG2), a computer program for solving ground-water flow equations

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hill, Mary C.

1990-01-01

This report documents PCG2 : a numerical code to be used with the U.S. Geological Survey modular three-dimensional, finite-difference, ground-water flow model . PCG2 uses the preconditioned conjugate-gradient method to solve the equations produced by the model for hydraulic head. Linear or nonlinear flow conditions may be simulated. PCG2 includes two reconditioning options : modified incomplete Cholesky preconditioning, which is efficient on scalar computers; and polynomial preconditioning, which requires less computer storage and, with modifications that depend on the computer used, is most efficient on vector computers . Convergence of the solver is determined using both head-change and residual criteria. Nonlinear problems are solved using Picard iterations. This documentation provides a description of the preconditioned conjugate gradient method and the two preconditioners, detailed instructions for linking PCG2 to the modular model, sample data inputs, a brief description of PCG2, and a FORTRAN listing.

Vector independent transmission of the vector-borne bluetongue virus.

PubMed

van der Sluijs, Mirjam Tineke Willemijn; de Smit, Abraham J; Moormann, Rob J M

2016-01-01

Bluetongue is an economically important disease of ruminants. The causative agent, Bluetongue virus (BTV), is mainly transmitted by insect vectors. This review focuses on vector-free BTV transmission, and its epizootic and economic consequences. Vector-free transmission can either be vertical, from dam to fetus, or horizontal via direct contract. For several BTV-serotypes, vertical (transplacental) transmission has been described, resulting in severe congenital malformations. Transplacental transmission had been mainly associated with live vaccine strains. Yet, the European BTV-8 strain demonstrated a high incidence of transplacental transmission in natural circumstances. The relevance of transplacental transmission for the epizootiology is considered limited, especially in enzootic areas. However, transplacental transmission can have a substantial economic impact due to the loss of progeny. Inactivated vaccines have demonstrated to prevent transplacental transmission. Vector-free horizontal transmission has also been demonstrated. Since direct horizontal transmission requires close contact of animals, it is considered only relevant for within-farm spreading of BTV. The genetic determinants which enable vector-free transmission are present in virus strains circulating in the field. More research into the genetic changes which enable vector-free transmission is essential to better evaluate the risks associated with outbreaks of new BTV serotypes and to design more appropriate control measures.

Gradient zone boundary control in salt gradient solar ponds

DOEpatents

Hull, John R.

1984-01-01

A method and apparatus for suppressing zone boundary migration in a salt gradient solar pond includes extending perforated membranes across the pond at the boundaries, between the convective and non-convective zones, the perforations being small enough in size to prevent individual turbulence disturbances from penetrating the hole, but being large enough to allow easy molecular diffusion of salt thereby preventing the formation of convective zones in the gradient layer. The total area of the perforations is a sizable fraction of the membrane area to allow sufficient salt diffusion while preventing turbulent entrainment into the gradient zone.

Gradient zone-boundary control in salt-gradient solar ponds

DOEpatents

Hull, J.R.

1982-09-29

A method and apparatus for suppressing zone boundary migration in a salt gradient solar pond includes extending perforated membranes across the pond at the boundaries, between the convective and non-convective zones, the perforations being small enough in size to prevent individual turbulence disturbances from penetrating the hole, but being large enough to allow easy molecular diffusion of salt thereby preventing the formation of convective zones in the gradient layer. The total area of the perforations is a sizeable fraction of the membrane area to allow sufficient salt diffusion while preventing turbulent entrainment into the gradient zone.

Vectors and Rotations in 3-Dimensions: Vector Algebra for the C++ Programmer

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-12-01

Proving Ground, MD 21005-5068 This report describes 2 C++ classes: a Vector class for performing vector algebra in 3-dimensional space ( 3D ) and a Rotation...class for performing rotations of vectors in 3D . Each class is self-contained in a single header file (Vector.h and Rotation.h) so that a C...vector, rotation, 3D , quaternion, C++ tools, rotation sequence, Euler angles, yaw, pitch, roll, orientation 98 Richard Saucier 410-278-6721Unclassified

Dai-Kou type conjugate gradient methods with a line search only using gradient.

PubMed

Huang, Yuanyuan; Liu, Changhe

2017-01-01

In this paper, the Dai-Kou type conjugate gradient methods are developed to solve the optimality condition of an unconstrained optimization, they only utilize gradient information and have broader application scope. Under suitable conditions, the developed methods are globally convergent. Numerical tests and comparisons with the PRP+ conjugate gradient method only using gradient show that the methods are efficient.

Dose gradient curve: A new tool for evaluating dose gradient.

PubMed

Sung, KiHoon; Choi, Young Eun

2018-01-01

Stereotactic radiotherapy, which delivers an ablative high radiation dose to a target volume for maximum local tumor control, requires a rapid dose fall-off outside the target volume to prevent extensive damage to nearby normal tissue. Currently, there is no tool to comprehensively evaluate the dose gradient near the target volume. We propose the dose gradient curve (DGC) as a new tool to evaluate the quality of a treatment plan with respect to the dose fall-off characteristics. The average distance between two isodose surfaces was represented by the dose gradient index (DGI) estimated by a simple equation using the volume and surface area of isodose levels. The surface area was calculated by mesh generation and surface triangulation. The DGC was defined as a plot of the DGI of each dose interval as a function of the dose. Two types of DGCs, differential and cumulative, were generated. The performance of the DGC was evaluated using stereotactic radiosurgery plans for virtual targets. Over the range of dose distributions, the dose gradient of each dose interval was well-characterized by the DGC in an easily understandable graph format. Significant changes in the DGC were observed reflecting the differences in planning situations and various prescription doses. The DGC is a rational method for visualizing the dose gradient as the average distance between two isodose surfaces; the shorter the distance, the steeper the dose gradient. By combining the DGC with the dose-volume histogram (DVH) in a single plot, the DGC can be utilized to evaluate not only the dose gradient but also the target coverage in routine clinical practice.

Dose gradient curve: A new tool for evaluating dose gradient

PubMed Central

Choi, Young Eun

2018-01-01

Purpose Stereotactic radiotherapy, which delivers an ablative high radiation dose to a target volume for maximum local tumor control, requires a rapid dose fall-off outside the target volume to prevent extensive damage to nearby normal tissue. Currently, there is no tool to comprehensively evaluate the dose gradient near the target volume. We propose the dose gradient curve (DGC) as a new tool to evaluate the quality of a treatment plan with respect to the dose fall-off characteristics. Methods The average distance between two isodose surfaces was represented by the dose gradient index (DGI) estimated by a simple equation using the volume and surface area of isodose levels. The surface area was calculated by mesh generation and surface triangulation. The DGC was defined as a plot of the DGI of each dose interval as a function of the dose. Two types of DGCs, differential and cumulative, were generated. The performance of the DGC was evaluated using stereotactic radiosurgery plans for virtual targets. Results Over the range of dose distributions, the dose gradient of each dose interval was well-characterized by the DGC in an easily understandable graph format. Significant changes in the DGC were observed reflecting the differences in planning situations and various prescription doses. Conclusions The DGC is a rational method for visualizing the dose gradient as the average distance between two isodose surfaces; the shorter the distance, the steeper the dose gradient. By combining the DGC with the dose-volume histogram (DVH) in a single plot, the DGC can be utilized to evaluate not only the dose gradient but also the target coverage in routine clinical practice. PMID:29698471

Towards human behavior recognition based on spatio temporal features and support vector machines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghabri, Sawsen; Ouarda, Wael; Alimi, Adel M.

2017-03-01

Security and surveillance are vital issues in today's world. The recent acts of terrorism have highlighted the urgent need for efficient surveillance. There is indeed a need for an automated system for video surveillance which can detect identity and activity of person. In this article, we propose a new paradigm to recognize an aggressive human behavior such as boxing action. Our proposed system for human activity detection includes the use of a fusion between Spatio Temporal Interest Point (STIP) and Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HoG) features. The novel feature called Spatio Temporal Histogram Oriented Gradient (STHOG). To evaluate the robustness of our proposed paradigm with a local application of HoG technique on STIP points, we made experiments on KTH human action dataset based on Multi Class Support Vector Machines classification. The proposed scheme outperforms basic descriptors like HoG and STIP to achieve 82.26% us an accuracy value of classification rate.

Inverse solutions for electrical impedance tomography based on conjugate gradients methods

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, M.

2002-01-01

A multistep inverse solution for two-dimensional electric field distribution is developed to deal with the nonlinear inverse problem of electric field distribution in relation to its boundary condition and the problem of divergence due to errors introduced by the ill-conditioned sensitivity matrix and the noise produced by electrode modelling and instruments. This solution is based on a normalized linear approximation method where the change in mutual impedance is derived from the sensitivity theorem and a method of error vector decomposition. This paper presents an algebraic solution of the linear equations at each inverse step, using a generalized conjugate gradients method. Limiting the number of iterations in the generalized conjugate gradients method controls the artificial errors introduced by the assumption of linearity and the ill-conditioned sensitivity matrix. The solution of the nonlinear problem is approached using a multistep inversion. This paper also reviews the mathematical and physical definitions of the sensitivity back-projection algorithm based on the sensitivity theorem. Simulations and discussion based on the multistep algorithm, the sensitivity coefficient back-projection method and the Newton-Raphson method are given. Examples of imaging gas-liquid mixing and a human hand in brine are presented.

Gradient Pre-Emphasis to Counteract First-Order Concomitant Fields on Asymmetric MRI Gradient Systems

PubMed Central

Tao, Shengzhen; Weavers, Paul T.; Trzasko, Joshua D.; Shu, Yunhong; Huston, John; Lee, Seung-Kyun; Frigo, Louis M.; Bernstein, Matt A.

2016-01-01

PURPOSE To develop a gradient pre-emphasis scheme that prospectively counteracts the effects of the first-order concomitant fields for any arbitrary gradient waveform played on asymmetric gradient systems, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using a real-time implementation on a compact gradient system. METHODS After reviewing the first-order concomitant fields that are present on asymmetric gradients, a generalized gradient pre-emphasis model assuming arbitrary gradient waveforms is developed to counteract their effects. A numerically straightforward, simple to implement approximate solution to this pre-emphasis problem is derived, which is compatible with the current hardware infrastructure used on conventional MRI scanners for eddy current compensation. The proposed method was implemented on the gradient driver sub-system, and its real-time use was tested using a series of phantom and in vivo data acquired from 2D Cartesian phase-difference, echo-planar imaging (EPI) and spiral acquisitions. RESULTS The phantom and in vivo results demonstrate that unless accounted for, first-order concomitant fields introduce considerable phase estimation error into the measured data and result in images exhibiting spatially dependent blurring/distortion. The resulting artifacts are effectively prevented using the proposed gradient pre-emphasis. CONCLUSION An efficient and effective gradient pre-emphasis framework is developed to counteract the effects of first-order concomitant fields of asymmetric gradient systems. PMID:27373901

Ternary gradient metal-organic frameworks.

PubMed

Liu, Chong; Rosi, Nathaniel L

2017-09-08

Gradient MOFs contain directional gradients of either structure or functionality. We have successfully prepared two ternary gradient MOFs based on bMOF-100 analogues, namely bMOF-100/102/106 and bMOF-110/100/102, via cascade ligand exchange reactions. The cubic unit cell parameter discrepancy within an individual ternary gradient MOF crystal is as large as ∼1 nm, demonstrating the impressive compatibility and flexibility of the component MOF materials. Because of the presence of a continuum of unit cells, the pore diameters within individual crystals also change in a gradient fashion from ∼2.5 nm to ∼3.0 nm for bMOF-100/102/106, and from ∼2.2 nm to ∼2.7 nm for bMOF-110/100/102, indicating significant porosity gradients. Like previously reported binary gradient MOFs, the composition of the ternary gradient MOFs can be easily controlled by adjusting the reaction conditions. Finally, X-ray diffraction and microspectrophotometry were used to analyse fractured gradient MOF crystals by comparing unit cell parameters and absorbance spectra at different locations, thus revealing the profile of heterogeneity (i.e. gradient distribution of properties) and further confirming the formation of ternary gradient MOFs.

$L_{0}$ Gradient Projection.

PubMed

Ono, Shunsuke

2017-04-01

Minimizing L 0 gradient, the number of the non-zero gradients of an image, together with a quadratic data-fidelity to an input image has been recognized as a powerful edge-preserving filtering method. However, the L 0 gradient minimization has an inherent difficulty: a user-given parameter controlling the degree of flatness does not have a physical meaning since the parameter just balances the relative importance of the L 0 gradient term to the quadratic data-fidelity term. As a result, the setting of the parameter is a troublesome work in the L 0 gradient minimization. To circumvent the difficulty, we propose a new edge-preserving filtering method with a novel use of the L 0 gradient. Our method is formulated as the minimization of the quadratic data-fidelity subject to the hard constraint that the L 0 gradient is less than a user-given parameter α . This strategy is much more intuitive than the L 0 gradient minimization because the parameter α has a clear meaning: the L 0 gradient value of the output image itself, so that one can directly impose a desired degree of flatness by α . We also provide an efficient algorithm based on the so-called alternating direction method of multipliers for computing an approximate solution of the nonconvex problem, where we decompose it into two subproblems and derive closed-form solutions to them. The advantages of our method are demonstrated through extensive experiments.

Gradient pre-emphasis to counteract first-order concomitant fields on asymmetric MRI gradient systems.

PubMed

Tao, Shengzhen; Weavers, Paul T; Trzasko, Joshua D; Shu, Yunhong; Huston, John; Lee, Seung-Kyun; Frigo, Louis M; Bernstein, Matt A

2017-06-01

To develop a gradient pre-emphasis scheme that prospectively counteracts the effects of the first-order concomitant fields for any arbitrary gradient waveform played on asymmetric gradient systems, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using a real-time implementation on a compact gradient system. After reviewing the first-order concomitant fields that are present on asymmetric gradients, we developed a generalized gradient pre-emphasis model assuming arbitrary gradient waveforms to counteract their effects. A numerically straightforward, easily implemented approximate solution to this pre-emphasis problem was derived that was compatible with the current hardware infrastructure of conventional MRI scanners for eddy current compensation. The proposed method was implemented on the gradient driver subsystem, and its real-time use was tested using a series of phantom and in vivo data acquired from two-dimensional Cartesian phase-difference, echo-planar imaging, and spiral acquisitions. The phantom and in vivo results demonstrated that unless accounted for, first-order concomitant fields introduce considerable phase estimation error into the measured data and result in images with spatially dependent blurring/distortion. The resulting artifacts were effectively prevented using the proposed gradient pre-emphasis. We have developed an efficient and effective gradient pre-emphasis framework to counteract the effects of first-order concomitant fields of asymmetric gradient systems. Magn Reson Med 77:2250-2262, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Vector-borne Infections

PubMed Central

Ben Beard, C.

2011-01-01

Infections with vector-borne pathogens are a major source of emerging diseases. The ability of vectors to bridge spatial and ecologic gaps between animals and humans increases opportunities for emergence. Small adaptations of a pathogen to a vector can have profound effects on the rate of transmission to humans. PMID:21529382

Observations of wave-induced pore pressure gradients and bed level response on a surf zone sandbar

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anderson, Dylan; Cox, Dan; Mieras, Ryan; Puleo, Jack A.; Hsu, Tian-Jian

2017-06-01

Horizontal and vertical pressure gradients may be important physical mechanisms contributing to onshore sediment transport beneath steep, near-breaking waves in the surf zone. A barred beach was constructed in a large-scale laboratory wave flume with a fixed profile containing a mobile sediment layer on the crest of the sandbar. Horizontal and vertical pore pressure gradients were obtained by finite differences of measurements from an array of pressure transducers buried within the upper several centimeters of the bed. Colocated observations of erosion depth were made during asymmetric wave trials with wave heights between 0.10 and 0.98 m, consistently resulting in onshore sheet flow sediment transport. The pore pressure gradient vector within the bed exhibited temporal rotations during each wave cycle, directed predominantly upward under the trough and then rapidly rotating onshore and downward as the wavefront passed. The magnitude of the pore pressure gradient during each phase of rotation was correlated with local wave steepness and relative depth. Momentary bed failures as deep as 20 grain diameters were coincident with sharp increases in the onshore-directed pore pressure gradients, but occurred at horizontal pressure gradients less than theoretical critical values for initiation of the motion for compact beds. An expression combining the effects of both horizontal and vertical pore pressure gradients with bed shear stress and soil stability is used to determine that failure of the bed is initiated at nonnegligible values of both forces.