Hadamard matrix is defined as a square matrix where any components are -1 or +1, and where any pairs of rows are mutually orthogonal. In this work, we consider the similar matrix on finite field ...GF(p) where p is an odd prime. In such a matrix, every component is one of the integers on GF(p)\{0}, that is, {1,2,...,p-1}. Any additions and multiplications should be executed under modulo p. In this paper, a method to generate such matrices is proposed. In addition, the paper includes the applications to generate n-shift orthogonal sequences and complete complementary codes. The generated complete complementary code is a family of multi-valued sequences on GF(p)\{0}, where the number of sequence sets, the number of sequences in each sequence set and the sequence length depend on the various divisors of p-1. Such complete complementary codes with various parameters have not been proposed in previous studies.
Body shapes are much more variable than body plans. One way to alter body shapes independently of body plans would be to mechanically deform bodies. To what extent body shapes are regulated ...physically, or molecules involved in physical control of morphogenesis, remain elusive. During fly metamorphosis, the cuticle (exoskeleton) covering the larval body contracts longitudinally and expands laterally to become the ellipsoidal pupal case (puparium). Here we show that Drosophila melanogaster Obstructor-E (Obst-E) is a protein constituent of the larval cuticle that confers the oriented contractility/expandability. In the absence of obst-E function, the larval cuticle fails to undergo metamorphic shape change and finally becomes a twiggy puparium. We present results indicating that Obst-E regulates the arrangement of chitin, a long-chain polysaccharide and a central component of the insect cuticle, and directs the formation of supracellular ridges on the larval cuticle. We further show that Obst-E is locally required for the oriented shape change of the cuticle during metamorphosis, which is associated with changes in the morphology of those ridges. Thus, Obst-E dramatically affects the body shape in a direct, physical manner by controlling the mechanical property of the exoskeleton.
Data hiding techniques are usually applied into digital watermarking or digital fingerprinting, which is used to protect intellectual property rights or to avoid illegal copies of the original works. ...It has been pointed out that data hiding can be utilized as a communication medium. In conventional digital watermarking frameworks, it is required that the difference between the cover objects and the stego objects are quite small, such that the difference cannot be recognized by human sensory systems. On the other hand, the authors have proposed a ‘hearable’ data hiding technique for audio signals that can carry secret messages and can be naturally recognized as a musical piece by human ears. In this study, we extend the idea of the hearable data hiding into video signals by utilizing the visual effects. As visual effects, we employ fade-in and fade-out effects which can be used as a kind of visual rendering for scene transitions. In the proposed schemes, secret messages are generated as one-dimensional barcodes which are used for fade-in or fade-out effects. The present paper shows that the proposed schemes have the high accuracy in extracting the embedded messages even from the video signals captured by smartphones or tablets. It is also shown that the video signals conveying the embedded messages can be naturally recognized by human visual systems through subjective evaluation experiments.
Zero-volt loop (ZVL) algorithms are known to be able to reduce peak flux linkages and resulting iron losses while keeping the same average torque in average torque control (ATC) of switched ...reluctance motors (SRMs). However, exploiting ZVLs to minimize the losses has been challenging due to the strongly nonlinear correlations between the torque and the control parameters of ATC caused by extensive magnetic saturation. In this paper, a fast optimization method for loss minimization is proposed, which can utilize all control parameters of ATC while operating with ZVL control. The proposed optimization method quickly calculates the current reference, which is one of the control parameters, so as to satisfy a torque reference, and consequently removes the time-consuming nonlinear constraint on the torque from conventional optimization methods. Using the proposed optimization method, the impact of ZVL control in loss minimization of SRMs is investigated with detailed simulations and experiments. The results verified that the utilization of ZVLs reduces iron losses without significantly increasing copper losses. It was found that the loss reduction was especially large (more than 15%) at medium speed and partial load. The loss reduction in the Japanese JC08 driving cycle for automotive propulsion for city driving was investigated and was as large as 15%. Furthermore, the vibrations that cause acoustic noise were also reduced.
During development of higher organisms, most patterning events occur in growing tissues. Thus, unraveling the mechanism of how growing tissues are patterned into final morphologies has been an ...essential subject of developmental biology. Limb or appendage development in both vertebrates and invertebrates has attracted great attention from many researchers for a long time, because they involve almost all developmental processes required for tissue patterning, such as generation of the positional information by morphogen, subdivision of the tissue into distinct parts according to the positional information, localized cell growth and proliferation, and control of adhesivity, movement and shape changes of cells. The Drosophila leg development is a good model system, upon which a substantial amount of knowledge has been accumulated. In this review, the current understanding of the mechanism of Drosophila leg development is described.
Body elongation is a general feature of development. Postembryonically, the body needs to be framed and protected by extracellular materials, such as the skeleton, the skin and the shell, which have ...greater strength than cells. Thus, body elongation after embryogenesis must be reconciled with those rigid extracellular materials. Here we show that the exoskeleton (cuticle) coating the Drosophila larval body has a mechanical property to expand less efficiently along the body circumference than along the anteroposterior axis. This "corset" property of the cuticle directs a change in body shape during body growth from a relatively round shape to an elongated one. Furthermore, the corset property depends on the functions of Cuticular protein 11 A and Tubby, protein components of a sub-surface layer of the larval cuticle. Thus, constructing a stretchable cuticle and supplying it with components that confer circumferential stiffness is the fly's strategy for executing postembryonic body elongation.
Antennae are multi-segmented appendages and main odor-sensing organs in insects. In Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), antennal morphologies have diversified according to their ecological ...requirements. While diurnal butterflies have simple, rod-shaped antennae, nocturnal moths have antennae with protrusions or lateral branches on each antennal segment for high-sensitive pheromone detection. A previous study on the Bombyx mori (silk moth) antenna, forming two lateral branches per segment, during metamorphosis has revealed the dramatic change in expression of antennal patterning genes to segmentally reiterated, branch-associated pattern and abundant proliferation of cells contributing almost all the dorsal half of the lateral branch. Thus, localized cell proliferation possibly controlled by the branch-associated expression of antennal patterning genes is implicated in lateral branch formation. Yet, actual gene function in lateral branch formation in Bombyx mori and evolutionary mechanism of various antennal morphologies in Lepidoptera remain elusive.
We investigated the function of several genes and signaling specifically in lateral branch formation in Bombyx mori by the electroporation-mediated incorporation of siRNAs or morpholino oligomers. Knock down of aristaless, a homeobox gene expressed specifically in the region of abundant cell proliferation within each antennal segment, during metamorphosis resulted in missing or substantial shortening of lateral branches, indicating its importance for lateral branch formation. aristaless expression during metamorphosis was lost by knock down of Distal-less and WNT signaling but derepressed by knock down of Notch signaling, suggesting the strict determination of the aristaless expression domain within each antennal segment by the combinatorial action of them. In addition, analyses of pupal aristaless expression in antennae with various morphologies of several lepidopteran species revealed that the aristaless expression pattern has a striking correlation with antennal shapes, whereas the segmentally reiterated expression pattern was observed irrespective of antennal morphologies.
Our results presented here indicate the significance of aristaless function in lateral branch formation in B. mori and imply that the diversification in the aristaless expression pattern within each antennal segment during metamorphosis is one of the significant determinants of antennal morphologies. According to these findings, we propose a mechanism underlying development and evolution of lepidopteran antennae with various morphologies.
Various sizes of chemical reaction network exist, from small graphs of linear networks with several inorganic species to huge complex networks composed of protein reactions or metabolic systems. Huge ...complex networks of organic substrates have been well studied using statistical properties such as degree distributions. However, when the size is relatively small, statistical data suffers from significant errors coming from irregular effects by species, and a macroscopic analysis is frequently unsuccessful. In this study, we demonstrate a graphical classification method for chemical networks that contain tens of species. Betweenness and closeness centrality indices of a graph can create a two-dimensional diagram with information of node distribution for a complex chemical network. This diagram successfully reveals systematic sharing of roles among species as a semi-statistical property in chemical reactions, and distinguishes it from the ones in random networks, which has no functional node distributions. This analytical approach is applicable for rapid and approximate understanding of complex chemical network systems such as plasma-enhanced reactions as well as visualization and classification of other graphs.
The main goal of group testing is to identify a small number of specific items among a large population of items. In this paper, we consider specific items as positives and inhibitors and ...non-specific items as negatives. In particular, we consider a novel model called group testing with blocks of positives and inhibitors. A test on a subset of items is positive if the subset contains at least one positive and does not contain any inhibitors, and it is negative otherwise. In this model, the input items are linearly ordered, and the positives and inhibitors are subsets of small blocks (at unknown locations) of consecutive items over that order. We also consider two specific instantiations of this model. The first instantiation is that model that contains a single block of consecutive items consisting of exactly known numbers of positives and inhibitors. The second instantiation is the model that contains a single block of consecutive items containing known numbers of positives and inhibitors. Our contribution is to propose efficient encoding and decoding schemes such that the numbers of tests used to identify only positives or both positives and inhibitors are less than the ones in the state-of-the-art schemes. Moreover, the decoding times mostly scale to the numbers of tests that are significantly smaller than the state-of-the-art ones, which scale to both the number of tests and the number of items.
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