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Copyright of Journal of Medical Biochemistry is the property of Society of Medical Biochemists of Serbia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Displacement meter synthesis (DMS), as a traditional method, is widely used to capture the local deformation of a specimen. However, for axissymmetrical circular columns, the axial compression instability cannot be accurately evaluated using the DMS method due to the uncertain bending direction. To address this problem, a 360° full-surface digital image correlation (DIC) system composed of eight cameras is proposed to capture the full-field deformation information of the column surfaces under axial compression. The objective of this study was to experimentally validate the efficiency of the proposed novel measurement in tracking the full-filled compressive deformation of a long wooden column with the circular cross-section. The test results showed that the columns experience instable failure. The multi-camera DIC system can completely reconstruct the three-dimensional shape of the circular column and obtain the whole process deformation state at any position on the surface of the timber column. The DIC method also can capture the uncertain lateral deformation direction and obtain the data of lateral deflection at the midspan of timber columns. The multi-camera DIC provides an intuitive and comprehensive new test method for the test and analysis of the stability of axisymmetric long timber columns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dual-biprism-based stereo camera system, with an imaging model derived from geometrical optics analysis, is proposed for detection of defects on the external and internal surfaces of pipelines. The proposed system, which comprises two biprisms, a lens, a single camera, and common light sources, overcomes the difference in the camera specifications and synchronization mechanism of conventional two-camera systems. Moreover, different fields of views can be obtained by adjusting the angles of the two prisms and the distance between the dual-biprism and the camera. Measurements can be made even for regions in narrow and small areas using a coaxial illumination and speckle-based three-dimensional digital image correlation method. After a typical experiment performed to verify the efficacy of the proposed system, three different types of defects were accurately detected: (1) a local indentation on the external pipe wall; (2) a weld defect in the pipeline that was measured, and the shape and location retrieved after image processing; and (3) a crack on the internal surface of the pipe determined based on strain calculation. These results validate the proposed system as an efficient and convenient tool for defect detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strain errors in stereo-digital image correlation (DIC) due to camera calibration were investigated using precisely controlled numerical experiments and real experiments. Three-dimensional rigid body motion tests were conducted to examine the effects of camera calibration on the measured results. For a fully accurate calibration, rigid body motion causes negligible strain errors. However, for inaccurately calibrated camera parameters and a short working distance, rigid body motion will lead to more than 50-µe strain errors, which significantly affects the measurement. In practical measurements, it is impossible to obtain a fully accurate calibration; therefore, considerable attention should be focused on attempting to avoid these types of errors, especially for high-accuracy strain measurements. It is necessary to avoid large rigid body motions in both two-dimensional DIC and stereo-DIC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple digital image correlation (DIC) systems can enlarge the measurement field without losing effective resolution in the area of interest (AOI). However, the results calculated in substereo DIC systems are located in its local coordinate system in most cases. To stitch the data obtained by each individual system, a data merging algorithm is presented in this paper for global measurement of multiple stereo DIC systems. A set of encoded targets is employed to assist the extrinsic calibration, of which the three-dimensional (3-D) coordinates are reconstructed via digital close range photogrammetry. Combining the 3-D targets with precalibrated intrinsic parameters of all cameras, the extrinsic calibration is significantly simplified. After calculating in substereo DIC systems, all data can be merged into a universal coordinate system based on the extrinsic calibration. Four stereo DIC systems are applied to a four point bending experiment of a steel reinforced concrete beam structure. Results demonstrate high accuracy for the displacement data merging in the overlapping field of views (FOVs) and show feasibility for the distributed FOVs measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noninvasive, three-dimensional (3-D), full-field surface deformation measurements of the human body are important for biomedical investigations. We proposed a 3-D noninvasive, full-field body sensor based on stereo digital image correlation (stereo-DIC) for surface deformation monitoring of the human body in vivo. First, by applying an improved water-transfer printing (WTP) technique to transfer optimized speckle patterns onto the skin, the body sensor was conveniently and harmlessly fabricated directly onto the human body. Then, stereo-DIC was used to achieve 3-D noncontact and noninvasive surface deformation measurements. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed body sensor were verified and discussed by considering different complexions. Moreover, the fabrication of speckle patterns on human skin, which has always been considered a challenging problem, was shown to be feasible, effective, and harmless as a result of the improved WTP technique. An application of the proposed stereo-DIC-based body sensor was demonstrated by measuring the pulse wave velocity of human carotid artery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bulge test has been utilized extensively in determining the mechanical properties of thin film materials. We develop a bulge-test system that consists of three main components, including an optical system, a loading system, and a control system. A telecentric lens is adopted as an imaging camera in an optical system to provide high imaging quality along with a constant angle of view across the entire field of view. The out-of-plane deformation is obtained by projecting a sinusoidal fringe pattern onto a specimen surface and analyzing recorded images with a digital image correlation algorithm. A least-squares polynomial fitting is presented to solve the problem that the out-of-plane calibration coefficient is not a constant. Experiments were performed to validate the availability and reliability of this proposed bulge-test system in the measurement of a dynamic microscopic deformation of membrane. The measuring range of deformation is from several microns to hundreds of microns with an accuracy of 0.6 µm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A marattialean trunk of Psaronius laowujiensis sp. nov. is described from the Upper Permian of the Xuanwei Formation, Panxian County, Guizhou Province, South China. The specimen most likely represents the lower part of the trunk, because the preserved thickness of the root mantel is somewhat larger than the diameter of the stem. Meristeles of the stem are arranged in approximately five tangential stelar cycles but not in radial files. Inner meristeles are in small number, ∼12-13, and loosely arranged. Leaf traces diverge helically and are organized in a 2/5 phyllotaxy. The leaf base vascular configuration consists of three strands that include a large U-shaped, centrifugal strand, a small centripetal strand, and an inverted ϙ-shaped internal strand. A vascular bundle sheath one or two cell layers thick surrounds each meristele. Within the centripetal concavity of each peripheral cauline bundle there are anchor-shaped sclerenchymatous strands. Ground tissue appears to consist of aerenchymatous parenchyma, in which secretory cavities are dispersed. Bound roots mostly possess seven to nine protoxylem poles. The vascular bundle sheath is one or two cell layers thick. The inner cortex consists of aerenchymatous parenchyma. A detailed comparison of the present specimen with known species of Psaronius from the Permian of South China is made. Our specimen is similar to Psaronius wangii in many aspects, but the two can be clearly distinguished by the structure of the ground tissue of the stem and the leaf base vascular configuration, which leads to the erection of a new species, P. laowujiensis, for this specimen. Certain important characters in species from the Permian of South China are discussed. The tree- or anchor-shaped sclerenchymatous configuration within the centripetal concavity of the peripheral cauline bundles is unique to species from the South China Permian. The permanent vascular bundle sheath surrounding the meristeles of the stem and the stele of the root is another remarkable feature of those species. The analogous tissue, termed "inner cortex" by certain authors, is also present in some Psaronius from the Euramerican and North China floras, but in those cases it is thinner walled and not as remarkable as the vascular bundle sheath in the species from South China. The leaf base vascular configuration of the species from the Permian in South China is more diverse than those from other places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new approach for online incremental word acquisition and grammar learning by humanoid robots. Using no data set provided in advance, the proposed system grounds language in a physical context, as mediated by its perceptual capacities. It is carried out using show-and-tell procedures, interacting with its human partner. Moreover, this procedure is open-ended for new words and multiword utterances. These facilities are supported by a self-organizing incremental neural network, which can execute online unsupervised classification and topology learning. Embodied with a mental imagery, the system also learns by both top-down and bottom-up processes, which are the syntactic structures that are contained in utterances. Thereby, it performs simple grammar learning. Under such a multimodal scheme, the robot is able to describe online a given physical context (both static and dynamic) through natural language expressions. It can also perform actions through verbal interactions with its human partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an unsupervised approach of integrating speech and visual information without using any prepared data. The approach enables a humanoid robot, Incremental Knowledge Robot 1 (IKR1), to learn word meanings. The approach is different from most existing approaches in that the robot learns online from audio-visual input, rather than from stationary data provided in advance. In addition, the robot is capable of learning incrementally, which is considered to be indispensable to lifelong learning. A noise-robust self-organized growing neural network is developed to represent the topological structure of unsupervised online data. We are also developing an active-learning mechanism, called ‘desire for knowledge,’ to let the robot select the object for which it possesses the least information for subsequent learning. Experimental results show that the approach raises the efficiency of the learning process. Based on audio and visual data, they construct a mental model for the robot, which forms a basis for constructing IKR1's inner world and builds a bridge connecting the learned concepts with current and past scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swd2, an essential WD repeat protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is a component of two very different complexes: the cleavage and polyadenylation factor CPF and the Set1 methylase, which modifies lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3-K4). It was not known if Swd2 is important for the function of either of these entities. We show here that, in extract from cells depleted of Swd2, cleavage and polyadenylation of the mRNA precursor in vitro are completely normal. However, temperature-sensitive mutations or depletion of Swd2 causes termination defects in some genes transcribed by RNA polymerase II. Overexpression of Ref2, a protein previously implicated in snoRNA 3′ end formation and Swd2 recruitment to CPF, can rescue the growth and termination defects, indicating a functional interaction between the two proteins. Some swd2 mutations also significantly decrease global H3-K4 methylation and cause other phenotypes associated with loss of this chromatin modification, such as loss of telomere silencing, hydroxyurea sensitivity, and alterations in repression of INO1 transcription. Even though the two Swd2-containing complexes are both localized to actively transcribed genes, the allele specificities of swd2 defects suggest that the functions of Swd2 in mediating RNA polymerase II termination and H3-K4 methylation are not tightly coupled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) is widely used in various measurement fields. Once a DIC setup is established, different parameters, such as lens focal length, pixel size, stereo angle, and working distance, are easy to know or measure; the range of the matching error is generally 0.01–0.02 pixels. It would be very convenient if the measurement error could be estimated based on the parameters above without performing the entire DIC calculation process. In this study, a numerical simulation was conducted to study the variation of the 3D reconstruction error with the stereo angle in different measurement areas. It was found that the error of the center point was closely related to the error of the full field. Therefore, using simple parameters to describe the 3D reconstruction error of the center point is of great significance for estimating the overall error of a DIC system. The general solution of the 3D reconstruction equation was simplified on the premise that high order terms of pixel coordinates could be omitted. The derived error estimation formulas had a simple form and described the 3D reconstruction error of the center point in three directions. Through a set of static experiments, the 3D reconstruction error of a planar object under different stereo angles (from 10° to 120°) was studied. The matching error was calculated by a 2D-DIC software and inserted into the proposed formulas to obtain the estimated error. The estimated error was compared with the results of a 3D-DIC software, and the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many standard mechanical tests and in all two-dimensional digital image correlation (2D-DIC) applications, the surfaces of specimens to be measured are planar. For the special case of planar surfaces, in this paper an efficient approach for stereo matching was proposed to further improve the computation efficiency of stereo-DIC. The proposed stereo matching method utilizes the characteristic of planar objects that the projection transformation functions between left and right images are the same for all matched subsets and can be expressed by eight parameters. In each pair of images, four discrete points were matched to calculate the projection transformation matrix, and then the stereo matching of all other points could be accomplished based on the calculated projection transformation matrix in an easy and efficient way. Both simulations and experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is feasible and effective and the computational speed is about 20 times faster than that of traditional method. Based on the proposed method, real-time stereo-DIC with a higher frame rate and more points should be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of stereo-digital image correlation (stereo-DIC) enables the application of vision-based technique that uses digital cameras to the deformation measurement of materials and structures. Compared with traditional contact measurements, the stereo-DIC technique allows for non-contact measurement, has a non-intrusive characteristic, and can obtain full-field deformation information. In this paper, a speckle-based calibration method is developed to calibrate the stereo-DIC system when the system is applied for deformation measurement of large engineering components. By combining speckle analysis with the classical relative orientation algorithm, relative rotation and translation between cameras can be calibrated based on analysis of experimental speckle images. For validation, the strain fields of a four-point bending beam and an axially loaded concrete column were determined by the proposed calibration method and stereovision measurement. As a practical application, the proposed calibration method was applied for strain measurement of a ductile iron cylindrical vessel in the drop test. The measured results verify that the proposed calibration method is effective for deformation measurement of large engineering components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the accuracy of strain measurement using a common optical extensometer with 2D digital image correlation is not sufficient for experimental applications due to the effect of out-of-plane motion. Therefore, this paper proposes a dual-reflector imaging method to improve the accuracy of strain measurement when using a common optical extensometer, with which the front and rear surfaces of a specimen can be simultaneously recorded in the sensor plane of a digital camera. By averaging the strain in two optical extensometers formed on the front and rear surfaces of a specimen, the effect of any slight out-of-plane motion can be eliminated and therefore the strain measurement accuracy can also be improved. Uniaxial tensile tests with an Al-alloy specimen, including static loading and continuous loading, were conducted to validate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed method. The strain measurement results obtained with the proposed method and those obtained with an electrical-resistance strain gauge were found to be in good agreement. The average errors of the proposed method for the two continuous loading tests were found to be 8  ±  10 με and  −6  ±  8 με. Given that no correction sheet or compensation specimen is required, the proposed method is easy to implement and thus especially suitable for determining the mechanical properties of brittle materials due to the high level of accuracy with which strain can be measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple and repeatable speckle creation method based on water transfer printing (WTP) is proposed to reduce artificial measurement error for digital image correlation (DIC). This technique requires water, brush, and a piece of transfer paper that is made of prefabricated decal paper, a protected sheet, and printed speckle patterns. The speckle patterns are generated and optimized via computer simulations, and then printed on the decal paper. During the experiments, operators can moisten the basement with water and the brush, so that digital patterns can be simply transferred to the carriers’ surfaces. Tensile experiments with an extended three-dimensional (3D) DIC system are performed to test and verify the validity of WTP patterns. It is shown that by comparing with a strain gage, the strain error is less than 50με in a uniform tensile test. From five carbon steel tensile experiments, Lüders bands in both WTP patterns and spray paint patterns are demonstrated to propagate symmetrically. In the necking part where the strain is up to 66%, WTP patterns are proved to adhere to the specimens well. Hence, WTP patterns are capable of maintaining coherence and adherence to the specimen surface. The transfer paper, working as the role of strain gage in the electrometric method, will contribute to speckle creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pta1 is a component of the cleavage/polyadenylation factor (CPF) 3′-end processing complex and functions in pre-mRNA cleavage, poly(A) addition, and transcription termination. In this study, we investigated the role of the N-terminal region of Pta1 in transcription and processing. We report that a deletion of the first 75 amino acids (pta1-Δ75) causes thermosensitive growth, while the deletion of an additional 25 amino acids is lethal. The pta1-Δ75 mutant is defective for snoRNA termination, RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain Ser5-P dephosphorylation, and gene looping but is fully functional for mRNA 3′-end processing. Furthermore, different regions of Pta1 interact with the CPF subunits Ssu72, Pti1, and Ysh1, supporting the idea that Pta1 acts as a scaffold to organize CPF. The first 300 amino acids of Pta1 are sufficient for interactions with Ssu72, which is needed for pre-mRNA cleavage. By the degron-mediated depletion of Pta1, we show that the removal of this essential region leads to a loss of Ssu72, yet surprisingly, in vitro cleavage and polyadenylation remain efficient. In addition, a fragment containing amino acids 1 to 300 suppresses 3′-end processing in wild-type extracts. These findings suggest that the amino terminus of Pta1 has an inhibitory effect and that this effect can be neutralized through the interaction with Ssu72. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to have an efficient design methodology and achieve high-performance inertial instruments, it is important to analyze the dynamic characteristics of micromechanical vibratory gyroscopes. In this paper, a novel optical method based on a high-speed CMOS camera and digital image spectrum correlation is developed to measure the motion of the sensitive elements. Unlike digital image correlation (DIC) in the spatial domain, correlation in the spectral domain gives direct access to the whole image under translational motion, which retains all the advantages of DIC and provides an expanded range of measurement. In addition, the proposed method is much faster in computation and capable of calculating dynamic temporal serial images in real time. The proposed method is employed to obtain the displacement of temporal series images and to extract dynamical parameters such as resonant frequency and quality factor at atmospheric pressure. During dynamic testing, the discrete wavelet transform is employed to eliminate the low-frequency components, and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for identification of the frequency and damping ratio. Experimental results show that the proposed method is a direct inspection tool and a practical alternative to the conventional electrical measurements of micromechanical vibratory gyroscopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]