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Semantic relationships between the predicators and referring expressions in real or unreal universes of discourse designate deep semantic cases that serve conceptually and functionally central role...

Benzimidazole containing mercapto group at the 2nd position is attractive nucleus for the modification with wider pharmacological activities. The aim of this study is to design benzofused nitrogen containing heterocyclic derivatives of mercapto benzimidazole using molecular docking. Using an effective procedure, N-substituted mercapto benzimidazole derivatives was synthesized. The antimicrobial activity of all the synthesized compounds was tested against four different organisms viz. E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans. Molecular docking of mercapto benzimidazole derivatives against DNA gyrase subunit B PDB: 5l3j and Staphylococcus aureus tyrosyltRNA synthetase PDB:1jij was performed using docking protocol. The compound binds to the active site of DNA gyrase subunit B (1KZN) in a docking study, indicating that it may have antimicrobial activity. Compounds MB3 and MB5 have good antimicrobial capacity whereas compound MB4 has the high activity against Candida albicans.

In this work, six voiced/unvoiced speech classifiers based on the autocorrelation function (ACF), average magnitude difference function (AMDF), cepstrum, weighted ACF (WACF), zero crossing rate and energy of the signal (ZCR‐E), and neural networks (NNs) have been simulated and implemented in real time using the TMS320C6713 DSP starter kit. These speech classifiers have been integrated into a linear‐predictive‐coding‐based speech analysis‐synthesis system and their performance has been compared in terms of the percentage of the voiced/unvoiced classification accuracy, speech quality, and computation time. The results of the percentage of the voiced/unvoiced classification accuracy and speech quality show that the NN‐based speech classifier performs better than the ACF‐, AMDF‐, cepstrum‐, WACF‐ and ZCR‐E‐based speech classifiers for both clean and noisy environments. The computation time results show that the AMDF‐based speech classifier is computationally simple, and thus its computation time is less than that of other speech classifiers, while that of the NN‐based speech classifier is greater compared with other classifiers.

In this paper, new conditions of the stability, stabilization and L2-gain performance of periodic piecewise systems are proposed. Both the continuous and discontinuous Lyapunov functions with dwell-time related time-varying Lyapunov matrix polynomial are adopted, and methods guaranteeing the positive and negative definiteness of a matrix polynomial are introduced. Exponential stability conditions are derived based on continuous and discontinuous Lyapunov functions, respectively. A stabilizing controller with time-varying controller gain is designed with continuous Lyapunov function and the weighted L2-gain performance based on the discontinuous Lyapunov matrix polynomial is studied as well. Numerical examples are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Image to video person re-identification (IVPR), i.e., matching between pedestrian video and image, is an important task in practice. Although several methods have been presented for IVPR, most of these methods investigate the IVPR problem under the supervised setting, and require a large number of labeled image-video pairs for training. In this article, we study the IVPR problem under the semi-supervised setting, and propose a Kernel Analysis-synthesis Dictionary based heterogeneous Distance Learning (KADDL) approach. Specifically, KADDL first learns two pairs of kernel analysis-synthesis dictionaries from the labeled and unlabeled training image-video data in the kernel space. With the learned dictionary pairs, the heterogeneous image and video features can be transformed into coding coefficients of the same representation space, such that the gap between image and video can be bridged. Then, KADDL learns a discriminative distance metric over the transformed coding coefficients, to make the coding coefficients of positive image-video pair become similar, while those of negative image-video pair dissimilar. To make better use of the unlabeled data, we further designed a reliability-based semi-supervised strategy for KADDL. Experiments on several publicly available pedestrian sequence datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This book is a unique take on the policies, strategies, and declarations of the relevant Arctic stakeholders. It also includes new and/or emerging trends of Arctic governance and geopolitics in the...

Inspired by the synergistic effects of hetero-aromatic scaffolds on curcumin, a novel array of pyrazoline substituted curcumin analogs was designed. Multi-scale computational studies were carried o...

Voice communication has been and remains one of the main ways of human communication and human-machine exchange. Today a construction of new perspective systems of processing and protection of speech information is impossible without modeling of effective mechanisms of speech transformation, creation of speech-like signals with the set properties.For this purpose a unique approach is proposed which deals with transformation of a halftone image of a speech signal spectrogram into a binary one, its subsequent modification in order to solve the problems of protection and processing of speech information, and the possibility of a reverse transition to a halftone image and subsequent synthesis of a new speech-like signal with the desired properties.An improvement of the model of speech formation, making use of the properties of auditory perception and taking into account the features of the formation of binary spectrograms can significantly reduce the amount of speech information without losing its semantic content and recognition and provide an opportunity to use a rich and well-tested arsenal of ways to recognize and process binary and halftone images and a number of other important advantages.The prospects of using image analysis-synthesis technologies in relation to narrow-band sonograms and other kind of images while solving the problems of acoustic steganography, digital noise cleaning and reconstruction of distorted phonograms, audio labeling of significant information, speech compression and restoration are also evaluated.

Ternary quantum dots (QDs) are novel nanomaterials that can be used in chemical analysis due their unique physicochemical and spectroscopic properties. These properties are size-dependent and can be adjusted in the synthetic protocol modifying the reaction medium, time, source of heat, and the ligand used for stabilization. In the last decade, several spectroscopic methods have been developed for the analysis of organic and inorganic analytes in biological, drug, environmental, and food samples, in which different sensing schemes have been applied using ternary quantum dots. This review addresses the different synthetic approaches of ternary quantum dots, the sensing mechanisms involved in the analyte detection, and the predominant areas in which these nanomaterials are used The authors give thanks to the CONACYT support for the grant number 771019 SI

Introduction: Malaria is one of the varieties of fatal diseases caused by a protozoan parasite that is now considered to be the greatest global health challenge. A parasite of Plasmodium species triggers it transmitting the disease to humans by the bites of female Anopheles mosquitoes. Aim: To screen out designed molecules by molecular docking analysis and assess their pharmacokinetic properties using SwissADME. To synthesize the designed compounds. To characterize the synthesized compounds by TLC, melting point, IR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, 1H NMR, and 13C NMR. To evaluate the synthesized compounds for antimalarial activity. Materials and methods: In silico analysis was performed with SWISSADME, and molecular docking was performed by AutoDock Vina version 4.2. In vitro antimalarial activity study was performed. Results: In-vitro studies of synthesized molecules showed that compounds C2 (IC50 1.23), C6 (IC50 0.48), C10 (IC50 0.79), and C14 (IC500.19) possess good antimalarial activity. Conclusions: 7-chloroquinoline-piperazine derivatives exhibited potential antimalarial compounds for pf-DHFR inhibitors.

Blind image deblurring remains a challenging problem for modern artificial neural networks. Unlike other image restoration problems, deblurring networks fail behind the performance of existing deblurring algorithms in case of uniform and 3D blur models. This follows from the diverse and profound effect that the unknown blur-kernel has on the deblurring operator. We propose a new architecture which breaks the deblurring network into an analysis network which estimates the blur, and a synthesis network that uses this kernel to deblur the image. Unlike existing deblurring networks, this design allows us to explicitly incorporate the blur-kernel in the network's training. In addition, we introduce new cross-correlation layers that allow better blur estimations, as well as unique components that allow the estimate blur to control the action of the synthesis deblurring action. Evaluating the new approach over established benchmark datasets shows its ability to achieve state-of-the-art deblurring accuracy on various tests, as well as offer a major speedup in runtime.

The technological phenomenon emerges definite and determining for the scientific technical development of any country, like challenge and perspective at the entrepreneurial surroundings. The construction of more functional strategies, they are responsible of the technological advance for the realization of his corporate purpose. From of the relative impossibility of scientific technological endogenous progress, the transference of technologies happens necessary in front of the steps of a developing society. His gradual evolution, has happened pertinent little, at times descontextualizada his implementation for the companies Cubans like recipients of technological parcels, to base the necessary construction of a process that harmonize the requests and realities.The essay has like objective to characterize the Technological Transference in the processes of deal as from the right of the Industrial Property in the foreign investment in the bringing up to date of the social economic model. They utilized themselves like fact-finding methods: The logical and historic juridical analysis, analysis synthesis, inductive deductive, exegetic juridical and by right compared. The contributions of this investigation enable the construction of theoretic frames hold strategies and horizontal and pertinent processes of technological transference.

The feasibility of Pd-based organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites is comprehensively explored with both theoretical and experimental methods for the first time. Experimentally, the new 3D perovskite CH3NH3PdI3 (tetragonal, I4 cm) can be transited to a new 2D perovskite (CH3NH3)3Pd2I7 (tetragonal, P4 mm) by modulating the ratio of the organic part to inorganic part. The structure, lattice parameters, and symmetry of these two perovskites are verified by a series of simulations, refinement, and characterizations. The basic optical and electronic properties of these two new perovskites are characterized and calculated with DFT for future applications. Interestingly, both types of perovskites exhibit long stability in air with 50% relative humidity. Two-day stability for the 3D perovskite and one-week stability for the 2D perovskite are observed, consistent with our DFT calculation that 2D perovskite (CH3NH3)3Pd2I7 is more energetically stable than 3D hybrid perovskite CH3NH3PdI3.

Increasing applications of compound-specific chlorine isotope analysis (CSIA) emphasize the need for chlorine isotope standards that bracket a wider range of isotope values in order to ensure accurate results. With one exception (USGS38), however, all international chlorine isotope reference materials (chloride and perchlorate salts) fall within the narrow range of one per mille. Furthermore, compound-specific working standards are required for chlorine CSIA but are not available for most organic substances. We took advantage of isotope effects in chemical dehalogenation reactions to generate (i) silver chloride (CT16) depleted in 37Cl/35Cl and (ii) compound-specific standards of the herbicides acetochlor and S-metolachlor (Aceto2, Metola2) enriched in 37Cl/35Cl. Calibration against the international reference standards USGS38 (-87.90 ‰) and ISL-354 (+0.05 ‰) by complementary methods (gas chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry, GC-IRMS, versus gas chromatography-multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, GC-MC-ICPMS) gave a consensus value of δ37ClCT16 = -26.82 ± 0.18 ‰. Preliminary GC-MC-ICPMS characterization of commercial Aceto1 and Metola1 versus Aceto2 and Metola2 resulted in tentative values of δ37ClAceto1 = 0.29 ± 0.29 ‰, δ37ClAceto2 = 18.54 ± 0.20 ‰, δ37ClMetola1 = -4.28 ± 0.17 ‰ and δ37ClMetola2 = 5.12 ± 0.27 ‰. The possibility to generate chlorine isotope in-house standards with pronounced shifts in isotope values offers a much-needed basis for accurate chlorine CSIA.

A look proposes the essay to the Strategic Administration, where his adequate implementation and application for the businessmen like subjects of step, will allow being more competitive in a demanding market that imposes commercial obstacles; For it appear from the past century XX the formula stimulation rewards from The Administrative Environmental right, like one of the incentives to ponder m. With the policies of fomentation established by the Public Administration, they will enable being able to reach the paradigm of the sustainable development like the mega, beginning of The Environmental right, where the man in his relation with the nature in order to achieve the conservation of the environmental conditions that calls for his habitat without prejudice to development the economic activities that have impact on it, and needs to establish mechanisms, measures and procedures that they enable a harmonious cohabitation of a natural, of it social and of what's economic. You set for yourself as objective, demonstrating the need of with the implementation of the Strategic Administration, fomenting the formulas of stimulation rewards within the subjects of step to attain with it the sustainable development as part of the States' public policies. The fact-finding methods are utilized the one belonging to analysis synthesis, induction deduction, juridical comparison.

Synthesis of delaminated 2D W1.33C (MXene) has been performed by selectively etching Al as well as Sc/Y from the recently discovered nanolaminated i-MAX phases (W2/3Sc1/3)(2)AlC and (W2/3Y1/3)(2)AlC. Both quaternary phases produce MXenes with similar flake morphology and with a skeletal structure due to formation of ordered vacancies. The measured O, OH, and F terminations, however, differ in amount as well as in relative ratios, depending on parent material, evident from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. These findings are correlated to theoretical simulations based on first-principles, investigating the W1.33C, and the effect of termination configurations on structure, formation energy, stability, and electronic structure. The theoretical results indicate a favored F-rich surface composition, though with a system going from insulating/semiconducting to metallic for different termination configurations, suggesting a high tuning potential of these materials. Additionally, free-standing W1.33C films of 2-4 mu m thickness and with up to 10 wt % polymer (PEDOT:PSS) were tested as electrodes in supercapacitors, showing capacitances up to 600 F cm(-3) in 1 M H2SO4 and high capacitance retention for at least 10000 cycles at 10 A g(-1). This is highly promising results compared to other W-based materials to date. Funding Agencies|Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF)Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research [EM16-0004]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg (KAW) FoundationKnut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation [RIF 14-0074]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009 00971]; Swedish Research councilSwedish Research Council [642-2013-8020, 2016-04412]; [KAW 2015.0043]

The morphological approach is a successful analytical tool for development schematic, conceptual and preliminary design of new engineering systems in Aerospace. This investigation used a morphological approach to engineering solutions development as well as to tools for creating promising individual smart rescue system on conceptual design stage. The problem was solved in two stages. At a higher level of the hierarchy, the principle of action in morphological box was chosen. In the second phase, specific engineering solutions were explored. Analysis of engineering systems, solutions and solving technique and systems and their potential opportunities with technique provide correct guidelines to supply the reasonable decisions. Flight simulations, depending on different initial conditions, were performed using the LANE program.

We developed an approach to analyze and synthesize linear electromagnetic metasurfaces at arbitrary angles of incidence. In addition to achieving closed-form expressions for the characterizing tensors, this approach provides physical insights into the metasurfaces’ operations. Thereafter, two sets of tensors are proposed so as to characterize arbitrary linear local metasurfaces in which spatially dispersive effects are negligible. Finally, the derived formulation is verified using full-wave simulations of a metasurface operating at THz frequencies.

In this paper we examine aspects of Canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual, endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian view which “disconcerts logic”. In contrast, two different approaches ground naturalistic perspectives to explore the logic of life (Jacob) and the logic of the living individual (Maturana and Varela) in the 1970s. Although Canguilhem is closer to the second, there are divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in his work and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. The reason may lie in their different views of science.

Automated histopathological image analysis offers exciting opportunities for the early diagnosis of several medical conditions including cancer. There are however stiff practical challenges: 1.) discriminative features from such images for separating diseased vs. healthy classes are not readily apparent, and 2.) distinct classes, e.g. healthy vs. stages of disease continue to share several geometric features. We propose a novel Analysis-synthesis model Learning with Shared Features algorithm (ALSF) for classifying such images more effectively. In ALSF, a joint analysis and synthesis learning model is introduced to learn the classifier and the feature extractor at the same time. In this way, the computation load in patch-level based image classification can be much reduced. Crucially, we integrate into this framework the learning of a low rank shared dictionary and a shared analysis operator, which more accurately represents both similarities and differences in histopathological images from distinct classes. ALSF is evaluated on two challenging databases: (1) kidney tissue images provided by the Animal Diagnosis Lab (ADL) at the Pennsylvania State University and (2) brain tumor images from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Experimental results confirm that ALSF can offer benefits over state of the art alternatives., Comment: 2018 ISBI conference accepted paper

In this paper, we propose a novel coupled dictionary learning method, namely coupled analysis-synthesis dictionary learning, to improve the performance of person re-identification in the non-overlapping fields of different camera views. Most of the existing coupled dictionary learning methods train a coupled synthesis dictionary directly on the original feature spaces, which limits the representation ability of the dictionary. To handle the diversities of different original spaces, We first employ local Fisher discriminant analysis (LFDA) to learn a common feature space for close relationship of the same people in different views. In order to enhance the representation power of the coupled synthesis dictionary, we then learn a coupled analysis dictionary by transforming the common feature space into the coupled feature space. Experimental results on two publicly available VIPeR and CUHK01 datasets have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

One of the topics in multi-rate digital signal processing is the theory and design of M-band (or M-channel) analysis and synthesis quadrature mirror filter (QMF) banks for sub-band signal decomposition and coding. They are also called M-band maximally decimated critically sampled QMF banks. The analysis QMF bank consists of M uniform and equally spaced channel filters to decompose the input signal into M sub-band signals. The synthesis QMF bank consists of channel filters to reconstruct the original signal exactly from sub-band signals, or to recover a signal which is nearly perfect approximation of the original signal. Historically, discovering the 2-band QMF banks in 1976 stimulated and started research activities leading to extending the theory of near-perfect and perfect reconstruction QMF banks for arbitrary number of sub-bands, to developing a family of near-perfect modulated filter banks (or pseudo-QMF banks) and perfect reconstruction modulated filter banks based on the concept of time domain aliasing cancellation.

Concept generation involves both analysis and synthesis activities interchangeably. In current practice, these two activities are often loosely defined and randomly performed. This paper presents a new method, called the Analysis Synthesis Alternation (ASA) approach, which treats concept generation as a proposition-making process and adapts the formal logic definitions of analytic and synthetic propositions to generate new concepts via two stages: ideation and validation. Both stages involve systemic alternations between analytic and synthetic propositions, but the alterations are performed in reverse reasoning directions. Experiment shows that ASA outperforms traditional brainstorming technique in both novelty and functionality.

A method for spectral and spatial multichannel analysis/synthesis of interior aircraft sounds is presented. We propose two extensions of the classical sinusoids+noise model, adapted to multichannel stationary sounds. First, a spectral estimator is described, using average information across channels for spectral peak detection. Second, the residual modeling is extended to integrate two interchannel spatial cues (i.e., coherence and phase difference). This approach allows real-time synthesis and control of sounds spectral and spatial characteristics. It finds applications for multichannel aircraft sound reproduction, and more generally for musical and environmental sound synthesis. The ability of the model to reproduce multichannel aircraft sounds is assessed by a numerical simulation.

Makale mimari programın yirminci yüzyılın ikinci yarısı boyunca kavramsal evrimini izler. Mimari program nosyonunun mimarlık söylemindeki evrimini ve mimarlıktaki konumunu çeşitli kuramcıların farklı görüşler sunan çalışmalarında gözden geçirir. Analiz-sentez ve varsayım-yanlışlama olarak ifade edilen farklı iki ana paradigmatik epistemolojik pozisyon altında kategorize edilebilecek söz konusu yaklaşımları ilgili pozisyonlara referansla gözden geçirmek suretiyle tartışır. Makale dört ana bölüm altında yapısallaştırılır. Durumu ve problemi özetleyen giriş bölümünü takiben ikinci bölümde ilk paradigmatik pozisyon olan analiz-sentezin epistemolojik kökenleri belirtilerek dönemin program anlayışının söz konusu epistemolojik kökene referansla nasıl kavramsallaştığının yanı sıra program-geleneksel tasarım, program-programlama-hesaplama gibi temel tartışma alanları, problemi ele alan farklı kuramcıların çalışmalarına referansla tartışılır. Üçüncü bölümde, bir karşı paradigma olarak gündeme gelen varsayım-yanlışlama modeli epistemolojik kökenleri üzerinden incelenir ve farklı kuramcıların çalışmalarında mimari programın nasıl değişip dönüştüğü; analiz-sentez modelinin eleştirisi üzerine kurulan varsayım-yanlışlama modeli altında mimari program anlayışının nasıl evrimleştiği araştırılarak tartışılır. Sonuç bölümünde ise, makale, mimari programın yeniden kavramsallaştırılmasına yönelik mimarlık gündemindeki güncel “durumu” ortaya koyar., This paper traces the conceptual evolution of Architectural Program through the second half of the 20th century. It discusses the evolution of the notion and its place in the architectural discourse in the works of various scholars, while giving and reviewing essential views, with a particular focus on two paradigmatic epistemological positions under which these views could be categorized: analysis-synthesis and conjecture-refutations. Aiming towards a reconsideration of the notion, it concludes with presenting our present understanding and conception of the notion, namely the present “state” of architectural program in the architectural agenda.

Timed automata and games, priced timed automata and energy automata have emerged as useful formalisms for modelingreal-time and energy-aware systems as found in several embedded and cyber-physical systems. Within the last 20 years thevarious components of the UPPAAL tool-suite has been developed to support various types of analysis of these formalisms.This includes the classical usage of UPPAAL offering efficient model checking of hard real time constraints (formally expressedin the temporal logics TCTL and MITL) of timed automata models as well as the branch UPPAAL CORA supportingoptimality analysis (expressed in weighted version of CTL) of priced timed automata. Most recently the branch UPPAALSMC offers a highly scalable statistical model checking engine supporting performance analysis of stochastic timed automatawith respect to MITL properties.The newest branch UPPAAL STRATEGO supports synthesis and evaluation of near-optimal yet safe strategies for stochastictimed games. This branch opens a new research direction where symbolic model checking techniques for real time systemsare combined with machine learning.

This letter proposes an HMM-based Text-to-Speech (TTS) system using waveform interpolation (WI)-based speech analysis and synthesis. The synthesized speech quality of the proposed system is significantly improved due to adopting an enhanced excitation modeling technique. The decomposition of characteristic waveform (CW) into slowly evolving waveform (SEW) and rapidly evolving waveform (REW) is efficient not only for excitation modeling but also for training process of HMMs. Objective and subjective test results verify the superiority of the proposed approach to conventional ones.

Effect of Method SAS (Structural Analysis Synthesis) Toward Improved Reading Skills Starts in Class II SDN Mappala Rappocini District of Makassar. The problem in this research is still low ability students in beginning reading skills. The formulation of the problem is whether there are significant structural synthesis method of analysis (SAS) to increase reading skills at the beginning of second grade students of SDN Mappala Rappocini District of Makassar City ?. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of structural synthesis method of analysis (SAS) to increase reading skills at the beginning of second grade students of SDN Mappala Rappocini District of the city of Makassar in the learning process. The approach used in this study is quantitative type of research is experimental, with Pre Test stage, treatment, and post test. The study design used is pre experimental design which is a form of research design one group Pre Test posttest design. The population and the sample was grade II SDN Mappala Rappocini District of the city of Makassar with enrollment of 30 students. Data collection techniques used is a test, documentation and observation. Data analysis technique used is the analysis of descriptive statistics, normality test, the hypothesis (t-test), and paired sample t-test. Early reading skills after giving treatment using SAS increases more than before the administration method of SAS in the learning process. After testing the hypothesis by using t-test showed that there were significant differences between the skills students memnaca starters. In conclusion SAS method provides a positive influence on students' reading skills at the beginning of class II.

This paper introduces an analysis/synthesis scheme for the reproduction of sounds generated by sustained contact between rigid bodies. This scheme is rooted in a Source/Filter decomposition of the sound where the filter is described as a set of poles and the source is described as a set of impulses representing the energy transfer between the interacting objects. Compared to single impacts, sustained contact interactions like rolling and sliding make the estimation of the parameters of the Source/Filter model challenging because of two issues. First, the objects are almost continuously interacting. The second is that the source is generally unknown and has therefore to be modeled in a generic way. In an attempt to tackle those issues, the proposed analysis/synthesis scheme combines advanced analysis techniques for the estimation of the filter parameters and a flexible model of the source. It allows the modeling of a wide range of sounds. Examples are presented for objects of various shapes and sizes, rolling or sliding over plates of different materials. In order to demonstrate the versatility of the approach, the system is also considered for the modeling of sounds produced by percussive musical instruments.

This paper considers anti-windup control systems and/or linear time invariant continuous-time systems with actuator saturation under persistent disturbances bounded in L ∞ norm. Our objective is to design dynamic output feedback controllers and anti-windup ones simultaneously that, in the presence of disturbances, causes closed-loop system trajectories starting from a larger invariant set to converge to a smaller invariant set guaranteed with the L ∞ performance. The invariant sets are expressed by a level set of quadratic Lyapunov functions. In synthesis, the effectiveness in the case when their Lyapunov variables are different from the common Lyapunov variable will be point out.

In this paper, we propose a new robust analysis tool motivated by large-scale systems. The ℋ∞ norm of a system measures its robustness by quantifying the worst-case behavior of a system perturbed by a unit-energy disturbance. However, the disturbance that induces such worst-case behavior requires perfect coordination among all disturbance channels. Given that many systems of interest, such as the power grid, the internet and automated vehicle platoons, are large-scale and spatially distributed, such coordination may not be possible, and hence the ℋ∞ norm, used as a measure of robustness, may be too conservative. We therefore propose a cardinality constrained variant of the ℋ∞ norm in which an adversarial disturbance can use only a limited number of channels. As this problem is inherently combinatorial, we present a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation based on the l1 norm that yields an upper bound on the cardinality constrained robustness problem. We further propose a simple rounding heuristic based on the optimal solution of our SDP relaxation, which provides a corresponding lower bound. Motivated by privacy in large-scale systems, we also extend these relaxations to computing the minimum gain of a system subject to a limited number of inputs. Finally, we also present a SDP based optimal controller synthesis method for minimizing the SDP relaxation of our novel robustness measure. The effectiveness of our semidefinite relaxation is demonstrated through numerical examples.

Gammatone filterbanks are widely used in computational auditory models for modeling the peripheral filtering function of the cochlea. However, the high computational complexity and time consumption limits its usage in portable acoustic applications. To address this issue, a realtime and efficient digital implementation of Gammatone filterbank is proposed. The decomposed signal can be resynthesized by summation directly. We systematically examine the Gammatone filterbank with perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), Short-Time Objective Intelligibility (STOI), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and computational complexity. Evaluations and comparisons show that the proposed method has good performance and less computational complexity.

We describe tools for automatic identification and classification of diatoms that compare photographs with other photographs and drawings, via a model. Identification of diatoms, i.e. assigning a new specimen to one of the known species, has applications in many disciplines, including ecology, palaeoecology and forensic science. The model we build represents life cycle and natural variation of both shape and texture over multiple diatom species, derived automatically from photographs and/or drawings. The model can be used to automatically produce drawings of diatoms at any stage of their life cycle development. Similar drawings are traditionally used for diatom identification, and encapsulate visually salient diatom features. In this article, we describe the methods used for analysis of photographs and drawings, present our model of diatom shape and texture variation, and finish with results of identification experiments using photographs and drawings as well as a detailed evaluation.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Julio C. Brégains; Francisco Ares "Analysis, synthesis, and diagnostics of antenna arrays through complex-valued neural networks", Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, 1512 - 1515 Volume: 48, Issue: 8, Aug. 2006, which has been published in final form at DOI: 10.1002/mop.21706. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving [Abstract] It is shown in this paper that when artificial neural networks are extended to be complex valued, they can be incorporated as a very powerful and effective tool in the analysis, synthesis, and diagnostics of antenna arrays.

A reaction response surface analysis was applied to a series of experiments carried out under various conditions (temperature, time, amount of a catalyst and reduction reagents, purification of the substrate). Significant improvements were made in the CC bond reduction in the benzylidene−thiazolidinedione intermediate in the synthesis of pioglitazone hydrochloride.

This paper proposes an E-cosmetic function for digital images based on physics and physiologically-based image processing. A practical skin color and texture analysis/synthesis technique is introduced for this E-cosmetic function. Shading on the face is removed by a simple color vector analysis in the optical density domain as an inverse lighting technique. The image without shading is analyzed by a previously introduced technique that extracts hemoglobin and melanin components by independent component analysis. Experimental results using UV-B irradiation and the application of methyl nicotinate on the arms support the physiological validity of the analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed shading removal. We synthesized the way facial images changed due to tanning or alcohol consumption, and compared the synthesized images with images of actual changes in skin color. The comparison shows an excellent match between the synthesized and actual images of changes due to tanning and alcohol consumption. We also proposed a technique to synthesize the change of texture in pigment due to aging or the application of cosmetics. The pyramid-based texture analysis/synthesis technique was used for the spatial processing of texture. Using the proposed technique, we could realistically change the skin color and texture of a 50 year-old woman to that of a 20 year-old woman.