A high-rate mimo receiver in an FPGA

This paper describes the hardware implementation of a High-Rate MIMO Receiver in an FPGA for three modulations, namely BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM based on the Alamouti scheme. The implementation with 16-QAM achieves more than 1.6 Gbps with 66% of the resources of a medium-sized Virtex-4 FPGA. This results indicate that the Alamouti scheme is a good design option for hardware implementation of a high-rate MIMO receiver. Also, using an FPGA, the modulation can be dynamically changed on demand.

Efficient feature selection filters for high-dimensional data

Feature selection is a central problem in machine learning and pattern recognition. On large datasets (in terms of dimension and/or number of instances), using search-based or wrapper techniques can be cornputationally prohibitive. Moreover, many filter methods based on relevance/redundancy assessment also take a prohibitively long time on high-dimensional. datasets. In this paper, we propose efficient unsupervised and supervised feature selection/ranking filters for high-dimensional datasets. These methods use low-complexity relevance and redundancy criteria, applicable to supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised learning, being able to act as pre-processors for computationally intensive methods to focus their attention on smaller subsets of promising features. The experimental results, with up to 10(5) features, show the time efficiency of our methods, with lower generalization error than state-of-the-art techniques, while being dramatically simpler and faster.

Desafios de um grupo heterogéneo em Idades: Gestão dos momentos em pequeno grupo na metodologia High/Scope

Relatório da Prática Profissional Supervisionada Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar

Design and construction of tunnels in zones subjected to high convergences

The economic development of a region depends on the speed that people and goods can travel. The reduction of people and goods travel time can be achieved by planning smooth road layouts, which are obtained by crossing natural obstacles such as hills, by tunneling at great depths, and allowing the reduction of the road alignment length. The stress state in rock masses at such depths, either because of the overburden or due to the tectonic conditions of the rock mass induces high convergences of the tunnel walls. These high convergence values are incompatible with the supports structural performance installed in the excavation stabilization. In this article it is intended to evaluate and analyze some of the solutions already implemented in several similar geological and geotechnical situations, in order to establish a methodological principle for the design of the tunnels included in a highway section under construction in the region influenced by the Himalayas, in the state of Himachal Pradesh (India) and referenced by "four laning of Kiratpur to Ner Chowk section".

A comprehensive high-throughput FTIR spectroscopy-based method for evaluating the transfection event: estimating the transfection efficiency and extracting associated metabolic responses

Reporter genes are routinely used in every laboratory for molecular and cellular biology for studying heterologous gene expression and general cellular biological mechanisms, such as transfection processes. Although well characterized and broadly implemented, reporter genes present serious limitations, either by involving time-consuming procedures or by presenting possible side effects on the expression of the heterologous gene or even in the general cellular metabolism. Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) spectroscopy was evaluated to simultaneously analyze in a rapid (minutes) and high-throughput mode (using 96-wells microplates), the transfection efficiency, and the effect of the transfection process on the host cell biochemical composition and metabolism. Semi-adherent HEK and adherent AGS cell lines, transfected with the plasmid pVAX-GFP using Lipofectamine, were used as model systems. Good partial least squares (PLS) models were built to estimate the transfection efficiency, either considering each cell line independently (R 2 ≥ 0.92; RMSECV ≤ 2 %) or simultaneously considering both cell lines (R 2 = 0.90; RMSECV = 2 %). Additionally, the effect of the transfection process on the HEK cell biochemical and metabolic features could be evaluated directly from the FT-IR spectra. Due to the high sensitivity of the technique, it was also possible to discriminate the effect of the transfection process from the transfection reagent on KEK cells, e.g., by the analysis of spectral biomarkers and biochemical and metabolic features. The present results are far beyond what any reporter gene assay or other specific probe can offer for these purposes.

A high throughput colorimetric assay of beta-1,3-D-glucans by Congo red dye

Mushroom strains contain complex nutritional biomolecules with a wide spectrum of therapeutic and prophylactic properties. Among these compounds, β-d-glucans play an important role in immuno-modulating and anti-tumor activities. The present work involves a novel colorimetric assay method for β-1,3-d-glucans with a triple helix tertiary structure by using Congo red. The specific interaction that occurs between Congo red and β-1,3-d-glucan was detected by bathochromic shift from 488 to 516 nm (> 20 nm) in UV–Vis spectrophotometer. A micro- and high throughput method based on a 96-well microtiter plate was devised which presents several advantages over the published methods since it requires only 1.51 μg of polysaccharides in samples, greater sensitivity, speed, assay of many samples and very cheap. β-d-Glucans of several mushrooms (i.e., Coriolus versicolor, Ganoderma lucidum, Pleurotus ostreatus, Ganoderma carnosum, Hericium erinaceus, Lentinula edodes, Inonotus obliquus, Auricularia auricular, Polyporus umbellatus, Cordyseps sinensis, Agaricus blazei, Poria cocos) were isolated by using a sequence of several extractions with cold and boiling water, acidic and alkaline conditions and quantified by this microtiter plate method. FTIR spectroscopy was used to study the structural features of β-1,3-d-glucans in these mushroom samples as well as the specific interaction of these polysaccharides with Congo red. The effect of NaOH on triple helix conformation of β-1,3-d-glucans was investigated in several mushroom species.

A cellulosic liquid crystal pool for cellulose nanocrystals: structure and molecular dynamics at high shear rates

Cellulose and its derivatives, such as hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC) have been studied for a long time but they are still not well understood particularly in liquid crystalline solutions. These systems can be at the origin of networks with properties similar to liquid crystalline (LC) elastomers. The films produced from LC solutions can be manipulated by the action of moisture allowing for instance the development of a soft motor (Geng et al., 2013) driven by humidity. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), which combine cellulose properties with the specific characteristics of nanoscale materials, have been mainly studied for their potential as a reinforcing agent. Suspensions of CNC can also self-order originating a liquid-crystalline chiral nematic phases. Considering the liquid crystalline features that both LC-HPC and CNC can acquire, we prepared LC-HPC/CNC solutions with different CNC contents (1,2 and 5 wt.%). The effect of the CNC into the LC-HPC matrix was determined by coupling rheology and NMR spectroscopy - Rheo-NMR a technique tailored to analyse orientational order in sheared systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

From the Bay of Biscay to the High Atlas: completing the anisotropic characterization of the upper mantle beneath the westernmost Mediterranean region

The knowledge of the anisotropic properties beneath the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Morocco has been dramatically improved since late 2007 with the analysis of the data provided by the dense TopoIberia broadband seismic network, the increasing number of permanent stations operating in Morocco, Portugal and Spain, and the contribution of smaller scale/higher resolution experiments. Results from the two first TopoIberia deployments have evidenced a spectacular rotation of the fast polarization direction (FPD) along the Gibraltar Arc, interpreted as an evidence of mantle flow deflected around the high velocity slab beneath the Alboran Sea, and a rather uniform N100 degrees E FPD beneath the central Iberian Variscan Massif, consistent with global mantle flow models taking into account contributions of surface plate motion, density variations and net lithosphere rotation. The results from the last Iberarray deployment presented here, covering the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula, also show a rather uniform FPD orientation close to N100 degrees E, thus confirming the previous interpretation globally relating the anisotropic parameters to the LPO of mantle minerals generated by mantle flow at asthenospheric depths. However, the degree of anisotropy varies significantly, from delay time values of around 0.5 s beneath NW Iberia to values reaching 2.0 sin its NE comer. The anisotropic parameters retrieved from single events providing high quality data also show significant differences for stations located in the Variscan units of NW Iberia, suggesting that the region includes multiple anisotropic layers or complex anisotropy systems. These results allow to complete the map of the anisotropic properties of the westernmost Mediterranean region, which can now be considered as one of best constrained regions worldwide, with more than 300 sites investigated over an area extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Sahara platform. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Rheo-NMR study of water-based cellulose liquid crystal system at high shear rates

Since long ago cellulosic lyotropic liquid crystals were thought as potential materials to produce fibers competitive with spidersilk or Kevlar, yet the processing of high modulus materials from cellulose-based precursors was hampered by their complex rheological behavior. In this work, by using the Rheo-NMR technique, which combines deuterium NMR with rheology, we investigate the high shear rate regimes that may be of interest to the industrial processing of these materials. Whereas the low shear rate regimes were already investigated by this technique in different works [1-4], the high shear rates range is still lacking a detailed study. This work focuses on the orientational order in the system both under shear and subsequent relaxation process arising after shear cessation through the analysis of deuterium spectra from the deuterated solvent water. At the analyzed shear rates the cholesteric order is suppressed and a flow-aligned nematic is observed which for the higher shear rates develops after certain time periodic perturbations that transiently annihilate the order in the system. During relaxation the flow aligned nematic starts losing order due to the onset of the cholesteric helices leading to a period of very low order where cholesteric helices with different orientations are forming from the aligned nematic, followed in the final stage by an increase in order at long relaxation times corresponding to the development of aligned cholesteric domains. This study sheds light on the complex rheological behavior of chiral nematic cellulose-based systems and opens ways to improve its processing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High-level Petri nets modules for embedded controllers design

Modular design is crucial to manage large-scale systems and to support the divide-and-conquer development approach. It allows hierarchical representations and, therefore, one can have a system overview, as well as observe component details. Petri nets are suitable to model concurrent systems, but lack on structuring mechanisms to support abstractions and the composition of sub-models, in particular when considering applications to embedded controllers design. In this paper we present a module construct, and an underlying high-level Petri net type, to model embedded controllers. Multiple interfaces can be declared in a module, thus, different instances of the same module can be used in different situations. The interface is a subset of the module nodes, through which the communication with the environment is made. Module places can be annotated with a generic type, overridden with a concrete type at instance level, and constants declared in a module may have a new value in each instance.

Development of a high-throughput monitoring technique of bacteria photodynamic inactivation

Summary form only given. Bacterial infections and the fight against them have been one of the major concerns of mankind since the dawn of time. During the `golden years' of antibiotic discovery, during the 1940-90s, it was thought that the war against infectious diseases had been won. However currently, due to the drug resistance increase, associated with the inefficiency of discovering new antibiotic classes, infectious diseases are again a major public health concern. A potential alternative to antibiotic treatments may be the antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation (PDI) therapy. To date no indication of antimicrobial PDI resistance development has been reported. However the PDI protocol depends on the bacteria species [1], and in some cases on the bacteria strains, for instance Staphylococcus aureus [2]. Therefore the development of PDI monitoring techniques for diverse bacteria strains is critical in pursuing further understanding of such promising alternative therapy. The present works aims to evaluate Fourier-Transformed-Infra-Red (FT-IR) spectroscopy to monitor the PDI of two model bacteria, a gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and a gram-positive (S. aureus) bacteria. For that a high-throughput FTIR spectroscopic method was implemented as generally described in Scholz et al. [3], using short incubation periods and microliter quantities of the incubation mixture containing the bacteria and the PDI-drug model the known bactericidal tetracationic porphyrin 5,10,15,20-tetrakis (4-N, N, Ntrimethylammoniumphenyl)-porphyrin p-tosylate (TTAP4+). In both bacteria models it was possible to detect, by FTIR-spectroscopy, the drugs effect on the cellular composition either directly on the spectra or on score plots of principal component analysis. Furthermore the technique enabled to infer the effect of PDI on the major cellular biomolecules and metabolic status, for example the turn-over metabolism. In summary bacteria PDI was monitored in an economic, rapid (in minutes- , high-throughput (using microplates with 96 wells) and highly sensitive mode resourcing to FTIR spectroscopy, which could serve has a technological basis for the evaluation of antimicrobial PDI therapies efficiency.

In Situ Near-Infrared (NIR) Versus High-Throughput Mid- Infrared (MIR) Spectroscopy to Monitor Biopharmaceutical Production

The development of biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes presents critical constraints, with the major constraint being that living cells synthesize these molecules, presenting inherent behavior variability due to their high sensitivity to small fluctuations in the cultivation environment. To speed up the development process and to control this critical manufacturing step, it is relevant to develop high-throughput and in situ monitoring techniques, respectively. Here, high-throughput mid-infrared (MIR) spectral analysis of dehydrated cell pellets and in situ near-infrared (NIR) spectral analysis of the whole culture broth were compared to monitor plasmid production in recombinant Escherichia coil cultures. Good partial least squares (PLS) regression models were built, either based on MIR or NIR spectral data, yielding high coefficients of determination (R-2) and low predictive errors (root mean square error, or RMSE) to estimate host cell growth, plasmid production, carbon source consumption (glucose and glycerol), and by-product acetate production and consumption. The predictive errors for biomass, plasmid, glucose, glycerol, and acetate based on MIR data were 0.7 g/L, 9 mg/L, 0.3 g/L, 0.4 g/L, and 0.4 g/L, respectively, whereas for NIR data the predictive errors obtained were 0.4 g/L, 8 mg/L, 0.3 g/L, 0.2 g/L, and 0.4 g/L, respectively. The models obtained are robust as they are valid for cultivations conducted with different media compositions and with different cultivation strategies (batch and fed-batch). Besides being conducted in situ with a sterilized fiber optic probe, NIR spectroscopy allows building PLS models for estimating plasmid, glucose, and acetate that are as accurate as those obtained from the high-throughput MIR setup, and better models for estimating biomass and glycerol, yielding a decrease in 57 and 50% of the RMSE, respectively, compared to the MIR setup. However, MIR spectroscopy could be a valid alternative in the case of optimization protocols, due to possible space constraints or high costs associated with the use of multi-fiber optic probes for multi-bioreactors. In this case, MIR could be conducted in a high-throughput manner, analyzing hundreds of culture samples in a rapid and automatic mode.

Generation of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies of IgG class against native β-d-glucans from basidiomycete mushrooms

β-d-glucans from basidiomycete strains are powerful immunomodulatory agents in several clinical conditions. Therefore, their assay, purification and characterization are of great interest to understand their structure-function relationship. Hybridoma cell fusion was used to raise monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) against extracellular β-d-glucans (EBGs) from Pleurotus ostreatus. Two of the hybridoma clones (1E6-1E8-B5 and 3E8-3B4) secreting Mabs against EBGs were selected. This hybridoma cell line secreted Mabs of the IgG class which were then purified by hydroxyapatite chromatography to apparent homogeneity on native and SDS-PAGE. Mabs secreted by 1E6-1E8-B5 clone were found to recognize a common epitope on several β-d-glucans from different basidiomycete strains. This Mab exhibited high affinity constant (KA) for β-d-glucans from several mushroom strains in the range of 3.20 × 109 ± 3.32 × 103-1.51 × 1013 ± 3.58 × 107 L/mol. Moreover, they reacted to some heat-treated β-d-glucans in a different mode when compared with the native forms; these data suggest that this Mab binds to a conformational epitope on the β-d-glucan molecule. The epitope-binding studies of Mabs obtained from 1E6-1E8-B5 and 3E8-3B4 revealed that the Mabs bind to the same epitope on some β-d-glucans and to different epitopes in other antigen molecules. Therefore, these Mabs can be used to assay for β-d-glucan from basidiomycete mushrooms. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.