The past decade has seen many advances in physical layer wireless communication theory and their implementation in wireless systems. This textbook takes a unified view of the fundamentals of wireless ...communication and explains the web of concepts underpinning these advances at a level accessible to an audience with a basic background in probability and digital communication. Topics covered include MIMO (multi-input, multi-output) communication, space-time coding, opportunistic communication, OFDM and CDMA. The concepts are illustrated using many examples from real wireless systems such as GSM, IS-95 (CDMA), IS-856 (1 x EV-DO), Flash OFDM and UWB (ultra-wideband). Particular emphasis is placed on the interplay between concepts and their implementation in real systems. An abundant supply of exercises and figures reinforce the material in the text. This book is intended for use on graduate courses in electrical and computer engineering and will also be of great interest to practising engineers.
Sequences of individual words make up media reports. And sequences of media reports constitute the power of the news media to influence corporate practices. In this paper, we focus on the ...micro-foundations of news reports to elaborate how an atmosphere of negative news reports following an initial exposure of corporate pollution activity can help stop such activity through their impact on corporate managers. We extend our understanding of the corporate governance effect of news media by considering two new aspects of reports—one, the proportion of words in negative reports relative to the total number of words in all reports; and two, the geographical origin of news media. We suggest that the more negative the media coverage, and the more local this coverage, the greater the impact on corporations. Our study of news media reports from more than 600 newspaper sources on disciplining pollution activities of listed Chinese firms from 2004 to 2012 provides strong support for our hypotheses. These findings have valuable implications for the handling of pollution issues in transitional economies via the power of news words.
In this paper, we consider a communication scenario in which the primary and the cognitive radios wish to communicate to different receivers, subject to mutual interference. In the model that we use, ...the cognitive radio has noncausal knowledge of the primary radio's codeword. We characterize the largest rate at which the cognitive radio can reliably communicate under the constraint that 1) no rate degradation is created for the primary user, and 2) the primary receiver uses a single-user decoder just as it would in the absence of the cognitive radio. The result holds in a ldquolow-interferencerdquo regime in which the cognitive radio is closer to its receiver than to the primary receiver. In this regime, our results are subsumed by the results derived in a concurrent and independent work (Wu , 2007). We also demonstrate that, in a ldquohigh-interferencerdquo regime, multiuser decoding at the primary receiver is optimal from the standpoint of maximal jointly achievable rates for the primary and cognitive users.
Fungi and allergic lower respiratory tract diseases Knutsen, Alan P., MD; Bush, Robert K., MD; Demain, Jeffrey G., MD ...
Journal of allergy and clinical immunology,
02/2012, Letnik:
129, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Asthma is a common disorder that in 2009 afflicted 8.2% of adults and children, 24.6 million persons, in the United States. In patients with moderate and severe persistent asthma, there is ...significantly increased morbidity, use of health care support, and health care costs. Epidemiologic studies in the United States and Europe have associated mold sensitivity, particularly to Alternaria alternata and Cladosporium herbarum , with the development, persistence, and severity of asthma. In addition, sensitivity to Aspergillus fumigatus has been associated with severe persistent asthma in adults. Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) is caused by A fumigatus and is characterized by exacerbations of asthma, recurrent transient chest radiographic infiltrates, coughing up thick mucus plugs, peripheral and pulmonary eosinophilia, and increased total serum IgE and fungus-specific IgE levels, especially during exacerbation. The airways appear to be chronically or intermittently colonized by A fumigatus in patients with ABPA. ABPA is the most common form of allergic bronchopulmonary mycosis (ABPM); other fungi, including Candida , Penicillium , and Curvularia species, are implicated. The characteristics of ABPM include severe asthma, eosinophilia, markedly increased total IgE and specific IgE levels, bronchiectasis, and mold colonization of the airways. The term severe asthma associated with fungal sensitization (SAFS) has been coined to illustrate the high rate of fungal sensitivity in patients with persistent severe asthma and improvement with antifungal treatment. The immunopathology of ABPA, ABPM, and SAFS is incompletely understood. Genetic risks identified in patients with ABPA include HLA association and certain TH 2-prominent and cystic fibrosis variants, but these have not been studied in patients with ABPM and SAFS. Oral corticosteroid and antifungal therapies appear to be partially successful in patients with ABPA. However, the role of antifungal and immunomodulating therapies in patients with ABPA, ABPM, and SAFS requires additional larger studies.
Nitrogen-doped TiO2 (N−TiO2) nanocatalyst with spherical shape and homogeneous size has been synthesized through a chemical method using TiCl3 as precursor. The light absorption onset shifts from 380 ...nm on pure TiO2 to the visible region at 550 nm with N−TiO2. A clear decrease in the band gap and the nitrogen 2p states on the top of the valence band on N−TiO2 (compared to TiO2) is deduced from the optical absorption spectroscopy results. The chemical nature of N has been evolved as N−Ti−O in the anatase TiO2 lattice as identified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue has been carried out both in the UV and in the visible region and N−TiO2 shows higher activity than the Degussa P25 TiO2 photocatalyst in the visible region.
We characterize the sum capacity of the vector Gaussian broadcast channel by showing that the existing inner bound of Marton and the existing upper bound of Sato are tight for this channel. We ...exploit an intimate four-way connection between the vector broadcast channel, the corresponding point-to-point channel (where the receivers can cooperate), the multiple-access channel (MAC) (where the role of transmitters and receivers are reversed), and the corresponding point-to-point channel (where the transmitters can cooperate).
Display omitted
•Multilayer of PVDF/PMMA blends was deposited using Langmuir-Schaefer method.•Predominantly present polar β phase at 10% of amorphous PMMA.•Porosity of blends increases with fraction ...of PMMA.•Contact angle hysteresis studies showed domination of chemical nature of surface.
The intermolecular interaction between the polymer chains of different functionality is known to influence the aggregation and molecular chain packing. This way, it is possible to tune the structure, stability and surface quality through the blending of polymers. With this in focus, a systematic studies was carried out to understand structural, morphological and wettability variation in Langmuir-Schaefer multilayer of poly(vinylidene fluoride)/poly(methyl methacrylate) blends. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction studies on blends showed a Bragg peak around 20.5° indicating the predominant presence of polar β phase up to 40% of poly(methyl methacrylate). Its fraction and dielectric environment are estimated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence studies, respectively. Morphological features of the blends studied using field emission scanning electron microscope showed a drastic change with increasing fraction of poly(methyl methacrylate). The surface quality and wettability of blends were assessed using contact angle studies. Contact angle and the volume of the sessile drop linearly decrease with time. A relatively faster evaporation of sessile drop was observed for higher fraction of poly(methyl methacrylate) attributed to its hydrophilicity. The evaporation kinetics was found to be largely dependent on the surface quality and chemical nature of poly(vinylidene fluoride)/poly(methyl methacrylate) multilayer.
Density based clustering techniques like DBSCAN are attractive because it can find arbitrary shaped clusters along with noisy outliers. Its time requirement is
O
(
n
2
)
where
n
is the size of the ...dataset, and because of this it is not a suitable one to work with large datasets. A solution proposed in the paper is to apply the leaders clustering method first to derive the prototypes called
leaders from the dataset which along with prototypes preserves the density information also, then to use these leaders to derive the density based clusters. The proposed hybrid clustering technique called
rough-DBSCAN has a time complexity of
O
(
n
)
only and is analyzed using rough set theory. Experimental studies are done using both synthetic and real world datasets to compare
rough-DBSCAN with DBSCAN. It is shown that for large datasets
rough-DBSCAN can find a similar clustering as found by the DBSCAN, but is consistently faster than DBSCAN. Also some properties of the leaders as prototypes are formally established.
Display omitted
•Langmuir and Langmuir-Schaefer (LS) films of poly(vinylidene fluoride) is studied.•Homogeneous optical texture and negative surface potentials observed for good solvents.•Larger ...fraction of polar phase is estimated in LS film of PVDF (good solvents).•Morphology of PVDF film: Good (swelling) solvents favor homogeneous (clustering).
Ultrathin film of poly(vinylidene fluoride), PVDF is formed by Langmuir technique using different solvents (good and swelling) as spreading agents at the air-water interface. Surface manometry on PVDF film shows that the lift-off area of the polymer depends on the nature of the solvent. Surface potential-area per monomer isotherm of the PVDF film shows a negative (positive) potential for good (swelling) solvents. Brewster angle microscope studies show that the textures of the PVDF film are found to be largely homogeneous for the good solvents in contrast to swelling agents. Further, multilayers of PVDF were transferred onto silicon substrates using Langmuir-Schaefer method and characterized using grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy techniques. Analysis of the signature peaks from FTIR studies yield evidence for the occurrence of a relatively larger fraction of polar β phase of PVDF film formed using good solvents.
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