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Brigham Young University

Faculty Publications

2007

Articles 1 - 30 of 38

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Analyzing Gene Relationships For Down Syndrome With Labeled Transition Graphs, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta, Quinn O. Snell, Randall J. Roper Nov 2007

Analyzing Gene Relationships For Down Syndrome With Labeled Transition Graphs, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta, Quinn O. Snell, Randall J. Roper

Faculty Publications

The relationship between changes in gene expression and physical characteristics associated with Down syndrome is not well understood. Chromosome 21 genes interact with nonchromosome 21 genes to produce Down syndrome characteristics. This indirect influence, however, is difficult to empirically define due to the number, size, and complexity of the involved gene regulatory networks. This work links chromosome 21 genes to non-chromosome 21 genes known to interact in a Down syndrome phenotype through a reachability analysis of labeled transition graphs extracted from published gene regulatory network databases. The analysis provides new relations in a recently discovered link between a specific gene …

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Measurement And Evaluation Of Blade Passage Frequency Fluctuations (A), Cole V. Duke, Scott D. Sommerfeldt, Kent L. Gee, Connor R. Duke Nov 2007

Measurement And Evaluation Of Blade Passage Frequency Fluctuations (A), Cole V. Duke, Scott D. Sommerfeldt, Kent L. Gee, Connor R. Duke

Faculty Publications

In the active control of tonal noise from cooling fans, one factor that can limit the achievable attenuation is fluctuation of the blade passage frequency in time. Large fluctuations in a short time can hinder the algorithm from converging to the optimal solution. Some fans have steadier speeds than others, which can be due to unsteady driving mechanisms or the physical structure of the fan. Environmental effects, such as back pressure and unsteady blade loading, can also cause the fan speed to fluctuate. The shifting in the blade passage frequency will be measured using a zero-crossing technique to track the …

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Spilling: Expanding Hand Held Interaction To Touch Table Displays, Jeffrey Clement, Dan R. Olsen Jr., Aaron Pace Oct 2007

Spilling: Expanding Hand Held Interaction To Touch Table Displays, Jeffrey Clement, Dan R. Olsen Jr., Aaron Pace

Faculty Publications

We envision a nomadic model of interaction where the personal computer fits in your pocket. Such a computer is extremely limited in screen space. A technique is described for “spilling” the display of a hand held computer onto a much larger table top display surface. Because our model of nomadic computing frequently involves the use of untrusted display services we restrict interactive input to the hand held. Navigation techniques such as scrolling or turning the display can be expressed through the table top. The orientation and position of the hand held on the table top is detected using three conductive …

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A Data-Dependent Distance Measure For Transductive Instance-Based Learning, Jared Lundell, Dan A. Ventura Oct 2007

A Data-Dependent Distance Measure For Transductive Instance-Based Learning, Jared Lundell, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

We consider learning in a transductive setting using instance-based learning (k-NN) and present a method for constructing a data-dependent distance “metric” using both labeled training data as well as available unlabeled data (that is to be classified by the model). This new data-driven measure of distance is empirically studied in the context of various instance-based models and is shown to reduce error (compared to traditional models) under certain learning conditions. Generalizations and improvements are suggested.

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Adtrees For Sequential Data And N-Gram Counting, Robert Van Dam, Dan A. Ventura Oct 2007

Adtrees For Sequential Data And N-Gram Counting, Robert Van Dam, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

We consider the problem of efficiently storing n-gram counts for large n over very large corpora. In such cases, the efficient storage of sufficient statistics can have a dramatic impact on system performance. One popular model for storing such data derived from tabular data sets with many attributes is the ADtree. Here, we adapt the ADtree to benefit from the sequential structure of corpora-type data. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach on a portion of the well-known Wall Street Journal corpus from the Penn Treebank and show that our approach is exponentially more efficient than the naïve approach to …

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Robust Multi-Modal Biometric Fusion Via Multiple Svms, Jonathan Dinerstein, Sabra Dinerstein, Dan A. Ventura Oct 2007

Robust Multi-Modal Biometric Fusion Via Multiple Svms, Jonathan Dinerstein, Sabra Dinerstein, Dan A. Ventura

Faculty Publications

Existing learning-based multi-modal biometric fusion techniques typically employ a single static Support Vector Machine (SVM). This type of fusion improves the accuracy of biometric classification, but it also has serious limitations because it is based on the assumptions that the set of biometric classifiers to be fused is local, static, and complete. We present a novel multi-SVM approach to multi-modal biometric fusion that addresses the limitations of existing fusion techniques and show empirically that our approach retains good classification accuracy even when some of the biometric modalities are unavailable.

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Psodascript: Applying Advanced Language Constructs To Open-Source Phylogenetic Search, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Jonathan Krein, Quinn O. Snell, Adam R. Teichert Oct 2007

Psodascript: Applying Advanced Language Constructs To Open-Source Phylogenetic Search, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Jonathan Krein, Quinn O. Snell, Adam R. Teichert

Faculty Publications

Due to the immensity of phylogenetic tree space for large data sets, researches must rely on heuristic searches to infer reasonable phylogenies. By designing meta-searches which appropriately combine a variety of heuristics and parameter settings, researchers can significantly improve the performance of heuristic searches. Advanced language constructs in the open-source PSODA project—including variables, mathematical and logical expressions, conditional statements, and user-defined commands—give researchers a better framework for the exploration and exploitation of phylogenetic meta-search algorithms. PSODA’s approach to scripting meta-search algorithms is unique among open-source packages and addresses several limitations of other phylogenetic applications.

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Psoda: Better Tasting And Less Filling Than Paup, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Mark Ebbert, Quinn O. Snell Oct 2007

Psoda: Better Tasting And Less Filling Than Paup, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Mark Ebbert, Quinn O. Snell

Faculty Publications

PSODA is an open-source phylogenetic search application that implements traditional parsimony and likelihood search techniques as well as advanced search algorithms. PSODA is compatible with PAUP and the search algorithms are competitive with those in PAUP. PSODA also adds a basic scripting language to the PAUP block, making it possible to easily create advanced meta-searches. Additionally, PSODA provides a user-friendly GUI with real-time graphing visualizations and phylogeny viewer, and a multiple sequence alignment algorithm PSODA is freely available from the PSODA web site: http://csl.cs.byu.edu/psoda.

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Using Parsimony To Guide Maximum Likelihood Searches, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Timothy O'Connor, Quinn O. Snell, Kenneth Sundberg Oct 2007

Using Parsimony To Guide Maximum Likelihood Searches, Hyrum Carroll, Mark J. Clement, Timothy O'Connor, Quinn O. Snell, Kenneth Sundberg

Faculty Publications

The performance of maximum likelihood searches can be boosted by using the most parsimonious tree as a starting point for the search. The time spent in performing the parsimony search to find this starting tree is insignificant compared to the time spent in the maximum likelihood search, leading to an overall gain in search time. These parsimony boosted maximum likelihood searches lead to topologies with scores statisitically similar to the unboosted searches, but in less time.

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Ecological Interfaces For Improving Mobile Robot Teleoperation, Michael A. Goodrich, Curtis W. Nielsen, Robert W. Ricks Oct 2007

Ecological Interfaces For Improving Mobile Robot Teleoperation, Michael A. Goodrich, Curtis W. Nielsen, Robert W. Ricks

Faculty Publications

Navigation is an essential element of many remote robot operations including search and rescue, reconnaissance, and space exploration. Previous reports on using remote mobile robots suggest that navigation is difficult due to poor situation awareness. It has been recommended by experts in human–robot interaction that interfaces between humans and robots provide more spatial information and better situational context in order to improve an operator’s situation awareness. This paper presents an ecological interface paradigm that combines video, map, and robotpose information into a 3-D mixed-reality display. The ecological paradigm is validated in planar worlds by comparing it against the standard interface …

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Using A Mini-Uav To Support Wilderness Search And Rescue: Practices For Human-Robot Teaming, Julie A. Adams, Brian G. Buss, Joseph L. Cooper, Michael A. Goodrich, Curtis Humphrey, Ron Zeeman Sep 2007

Using A Mini-Uav To Support Wilderness Search And Rescue: Practices For Human-Robot Teaming, Julie A. Adams, Brian G. Buss, Joseph L. Cooper, Michael A. Goodrich, Curtis Humphrey, Ron Zeeman

Faculty Publications

Wilderness Search and Rescue can benefit from aerial imagery of the search area. Mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can potentially provide such imagery, provided that the autonomy, search algorithms, and operator control unit are designed to support coordinated human-robot search teams. Using results from formal analyses of the WiSAR problem domain, we summarize and discuss information flow requirements for WiSAR with an eye toward the efficient use of mUAVs to support search. We then identify and discuss three different operational paradigms for performing field searches, and identify influences that affect which human-robot team paradigm is best. Since the likely location of …

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A Utile Function Optimizer, James Carroll, Christopher K. Monson, Kevin Seppi Sep 2007

A Utile Function Optimizer, James Carroll, Christopher K. Monson, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

We recast the problem of unconstrained continuous evolutionary optimization as inference in a fixed graphical model. This approach allows us to address several pervasive issues in optimization, including the traditionally difficult problem of selecting an algorithm that is most appropriate for a given task. This is accomplished by placing a prior distribution over the expected class of functions, then employing inference and intuitively defined utilities and costs to transform the evolutionary optimization problem into one of active sampling. This allows us to pose an approach to optimization that is optimal for each expressly stated function class. The resulting solution methodology …

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Parallel Pso Using Mapreduce, Andrew Mcnabb, Christopher K. Monson, Kevin Seppi Sep 2007

Parallel Pso Using Mapreduce, Andrew Mcnabb, Christopher K. Monson, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

In optimization problems involving large amounts of data, such as web content, commercial transaction information, or bioinformatics data, individual function evaluations may take minutes or even hours. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) must be parallelized for such functions. However, large-scale parallel programs must communicate efficiently, balance work across all processors, and address problems such as failed nodes. We present MapReduce Particle Swarm Optimization (MRPSO), a PSO implementation based on the MapReduce parallel programming model. We describe MapReduce and show how PSO can be naturally expressed in this model, without explicitly addressing any of the details of parallelization. We present a benchmark …

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Novel Perturbation Approach For The Structure Factor Of The Attractive Hard-Core Yukawa Fluid, Andrij Trokhymchuk, Roman Melnyk, Filip Moucka, Ivo Nezbeda Sep 2007

Novel Perturbation Approach For The Structure Factor Of The Attractive Hard-Core Yukawa Fluid, Andrij Trokhymchuk, Roman Melnyk, Filip Moucka, Ivo Nezbeda

Faculty Publications

A novel perturbation approach for the structure factor S(k) of the Lennard-Jones-type Yukawa fluid with z=1.8 is presented. An approach is based on a new reference system, that is, the short-range Yukawa model with z0 > z=1.8. By choosing for the reference system the value z0=6, it is shown that (i) the proposed approach for S(k) performs much better than the traditional hard-sphere reference perturbation method does; (ii) the use of an approximate mean spherical (MSA) description of the reference structure factor provides the results for S(k) that are more accurate as those obtained from the direct MSA computations; and (iii) …

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Poisson Disk Point Sets By Hierarchical Dart Throwing, David Cline, Parris K. Egbert, Kenric B. White Sep 2007

Poisson Disk Point Sets By Hierarchical Dart Throwing, David Cline, Parris K. Egbert, Kenric B. White

Faculty Publications

Poisson disk point sets are “ideally” generated through a process of dart throwing. The naive dart throwing algorithm is extremely expensive if a maximal set is desired, however. In this paper we present a hierarchical dart throwing procedure which produces point sets that are equivalent to naive dart throwing, but is very fast. The procedure works by intelligently excluding areas known to be fully covered by existing samples. By excluding covered regions, the probability of accepting a thrown dart is greatly increased. Our algorithm is conceptually simple, performs dart throwing in O(N) time and memory, and produces a maximal point …

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Image-Based Color Schemes, Bryan S. Morse, Daniel Thornton, Qing Xia, John Uibel Sep 2007

Image-Based Color Schemes, Bryan S. Morse, Daniel Thornton, Qing Xia, John Uibel

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a novel method for generating color schemes based on images intended to anchor color designs. This has wide applicability for web pages, printed materials, or other applications where images are used as a key part of the overall design. Unlike methods that are variants of color quantization and try to pixel-wise approximate the image, this method draws on graphic-design principles by emphasizing hue selection first, weighting effects of color by saturation, and considering the local spatial coherency in order to determine the overall visual impact of a color. Results demonstrate that the method generalizes to a wide …

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Hardness For Explicit State Software Model Checking Benchmarks, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta Sep 2007

Hardness For Explicit State Software Model Checking Benchmarks, Eric G. Mercer, Neha Rungta

Faculty Publications

Directed model checking algorithms focus computation resources in the error-prone areas of concurrent systems. The algorithms depend on some empirical analysis to report their performance gains. Recent work characterizes the hardness of models used in the analysis as an estimated number of paths in the model that contain an error. This hardness metric is computed using a stateless random walk. We show that this is not a good hardness metric because models labeled hard with a stateless random walk metric have easily discoverable errors with a stateful randomized search. We present an analysis which shows that a hardness metric based …

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Using Fuzzy-Word Correlation Factors To Compute Document Similarity Based On Phrase Matching, Jun Won Lee, Yiu-Kai D. Ng Aug 2007

Using Fuzzy-Word Correlation Factors To Compute Document Similarity Based On Phrase Matching, Jun Won Lee, Yiu-Kai D. Ng

Faculty Publications

One of the Web information Retrieval (IR) problems these days is to identify redundant information that exist in (replicated) Web documents. These documents can easily be found in several forms, such as documents in different versions, small documents combined with others to form a larger document, etc. As the Web is becoming more and more popular, the number of documents on the Web is increasing on a daily basis, and filtering redundant ones among this huge number of documents becomes a more difficult and an urgent task. As one of the solutions to this problem, we present a new method …

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Constructing Subdivision Rules From Rational Maps, J. W. Cannon, W. J. Floyd, W. R. Parry Aug 2007

Constructing Subdivision Rules From Rational Maps, J. W. Cannon, W. J. Floyd, W. R. Parry

Faculty Publications

This paper deepens the connections between critically finite rational maps and finite subdivision rules. The main theorem is that if f is a critically finite rational map with no periodic critical points, then for any sufficiently large integer n the iterate f is the subdivision map of a finite subdivision rule. This enables one to give essentially combinatorial models for the dynamics of such iterates.

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Using Box-Scores To Determine A Position's Contribution To Winning Basketball Games, Gilbert W. Fellingham, C. Shane Reese, Garritt L. Page Jul 2007

Using Box-Scores To Determine A Position's Contribution To Winning Basketball Games, Gilbert W. Fellingham, C. Shane Reese, Garritt L. Page

Faculty Publications

While it is generally recognized that the relative importance of different skills is not constant across different positions on a basketball team, quantification of the differences has not been well studied. 1163 box scores from games in the National Basketball Association during the 1996-97 season were used to study the relationship of skill performance by position and game outcome as measured by point differentials. A hierarchical Bayesian model was fit with individual players viewed as a draw from a population of players playing a particular position: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center, and bench. Posterior distributions for …

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A Dynamic Attribute-Based Load Shedding Scheme For Data Stream Management Systems, Amit Ahuja, Yiu-Kai D. Ng Jul 2007

A Dynamic Attribute-Based Load Shedding Scheme For Data Stream Management Systems, Amit Ahuja, Yiu-Kai D. Ng

Faculty Publications

A data stream being transmitted over a network channel with capacity less than the data transmission rate of the data stream causes sequential network problems. In this paper, we present a new approach for shedding less-informative attribute data from a data stream to maintain a data transmission rate less than the network channel capacity. A scheme for shedding attributes and their data, instead of tuples, becomes imperative in data stream load shedding, since shedding a complete tuple would lead to shedding informative attribute data along with less-informative attribute data in the tuple. Our load shedding approach handles intra-stream, as well …

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Active Learning For Part-Of-Speech Tagging: Accelerating Corpus Annotation, George Busby, Marc Carmen, James Carroll, Robbie Haertel, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Peter Mcclanahan, Eric K. Ringger, Kevin Seppi Jun 2007

Active Learning For Part-Of-Speech Tagging: Accelerating Corpus Annotation, George Busby, Marc Carmen, James Carroll, Robbie Haertel, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Peter Mcclanahan, Eric K. Ringger, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

In the construction of a part-of-speech annotated corpus, we are constrained by a fixed budget. A fully annotated corpus is required, but we can afford to label only a subset. We train a Maximum Entropy Markov Model tagger from a labeled subset and automatically tag the remainder. This paper addresses the question of where to focus our manual tagging efforts in order to deliver an annotation of highest quality. In this context, we find that active learning is always helpful. We focus on Query by Uncertainty (QBU) and Query by Committee (QBC) and report on experiments with several baselines and …

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Probabilistic Searching Using A Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Steven R. Hansen, Timothy W. Mclain, Michael A. Goodrich May 2007

Probabilistic Searching Using A Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Steven R. Hansen, Timothy W. Mclain, Michael A. Goodrich

Faculty Publications

Ground breaking concepts in optimal search theory were developed during World War II by the U.S. Navy. These concepts use an assumed detection model to calculate a detection probability rate and an optimal search allocation. Although this theory is useful in determining when and where search effort should be applied, it offers little guidance for the planning of search paths. This paper explains how search theory can be applied to path planning for an SUAV with a fixed CCD camera. Three search strategies are developed: greedy search, contour search, and composite search. In addition, the concepts of search efficiency and …

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Anomalous Magnetic Field Dependence Of The T1 Spin Lifetime In A Lightly Doped Gaas Sample, John S. Colton, M. E. Heeb, P. Schroeder, A. Stokes, L. R. Wienkes, A. S. Bracker May 2007

Anomalous Magnetic Field Dependence Of The T1 Spin Lifetime In A Lightly Doped Gaas Sample, John S. Colton, M. E. Heeb, P. Schroeder, A. Stokes, L. R. Wienkes, A. S. Bracker

Faculty Publications

The T1 spin lifetime of a lightly doped n-type GaAs sample has been measured via time-resolved polarization spectroscopy under a number of temperature and magnetic field conditions. Lifetimes up to 19 μs have been measured. The magnetic field dependence of T1 shows a nonmonotonic behavior, where the spin lifetime first increases, then decreases, then increases again with field. The initial increase in T1 is understood to be due to correlation between electrons localized on donors. The decrease in T1 is likely due to phonon-related spin-orbit relaxation. The final increase in T1 with B indicates a suppression of the spin-orbit relaxation …

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To Repair Or Not To Repair: Helping Ad Hoc Routing Protocols To Distinguish Mobility From Congestion, Qiuyi Duan, Roger Pack, Manoj Pandey, Lei Wang, Daniel Zappala May 2007

To Repair Or Not To Repair: Helping Ad Hoc Routing Protocols To Distinguish Mobility From Congestion, Qiuyi Duan, Roger Pack, Manoj Pandey, Lei Wang, Daniel Zappala

Faculty Publications

In this paper we consider the problem of distinguishing whether frame loss at the MAC layer has occurred due to mobility or congestion. Most ad hoc routing protocols make the faulty assumption that all frame loss means the destination node has moved, resulting in significant overhead as they initiate the repair of routes that have not been broken. We design a mobility detection algorithm, MDA, that properly detects the cause of a lost frame, then coordinates with the routing protocol so that it reacts properly. This approach dramatically reduces routing protocol overhead and significantly increases application throughput. We use a …

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Hikorocodium Endo Is Not An Alga But An Inozoid Sponge, J. Keith Rigby, Baba Senowbari-Daryan Apr 2007

Hikorocodium Endo Is Not An Alga But An Inozoid Sponge, J. Keith Rigby, Baba Senowbari-Daryan

Faculty Publications

The genus Hikorocodium, with the type species Hikorocodium elegantae from the Permian of Japan, was described originally as a codiacean alga by Endo. It is not a codiacean alga but an inozoid sponge of the family Preperonidellidae. Several fossils described later by Endo and other authors as H. elegantae should be assigned to different inozoid sponge taxa. Specimens of H. fertiliz, described by Endo from the Jurassic of Japan, are also sponge fragments. The taxonomic positions of H. transversum Endo and H. kuramotoi Nakamura, as sponges or

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The Niemann-Pick Type C2 Protein Loads Isoglobotrihexosylceramide Onto Cd1d Molecules And Contributes To The Thymic Selection Of Nkt Cells, Paul B. Savage, Nicolas Schrantz, Yuval Sagiv, Yang Liu, Albert Bendelac, Luc Teyton Mar 2007

The Niemann-Pick Type C2 Protein Loads Isoglobotrihexosylceramide Onto Cd1d Molecules And Contributes To The Thymic Selection Of Nkt Cells, Paul B. Savage, Nicolas Schrantz, Yuval Sagiv, Yang Liu, Albert Bendelac, Luc Teyton

Faculty Publications

The Niemann-Pick type C2 (NPC2) protein is a small, soluble, lysosomal protein important for cholesterol and sphingolipid transport in the lysosome. The immunological phenotype of NPC2-deficient mice was limited to an impaired thymic selection of Valpha 14 natural killer T cells (NKT cells) and a subsequent reduction of NKT cells in the periphery. The remaining NKT cells failed to produce measurable quantities of interferon-gamma in vivo and in vitro after activation with alpha-galactosylceramide. In addition, thymocytes and splenocytes from NPC2-deficient mice were poor presenters of endogenous and exogenous lipids to CD1d-restricted Valpha 14 hybridoma cells. Importantly, we determined that similar …

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Ria: An Rf Interference Avoidance Algorithm For Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Daniel P. Delorey, Qiuyi Duan, Charles D. Knutson, Manoj Pandey, Lei Wang, Ryan W. Woodings, Daniel Zappala Mar 2007

Ria: An Rf Interference Avoidance Algorithm For Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, Daniel P. Delorey, Qiuyi Duan, Charles D. Knutson, Manoj Pandey, Lei Wang, Ryan W. Woodings, Daniel Zappala

Faculty Publications

Devices with multiple wireless interfaces are becoming increasingly popular. We envision that these devices will become the building block for future mesh networks, providing seamless connectivity across a range of heterogeneous devices. Although these devices typically implement frequency sharing, using either Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) or Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), they may still interfere with one another. In this paper we provide a novel Radio Interference Avoidance (RIA) algorithm that solves the problem of interference between IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth. We then extend this algorithm to other types of DSSS and FHSS combinations. Though the algorithm is limited …

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Grating Lobe Reduction In Transducer Arrays Through Structural Filtering Of Supercritical Plates, Brian E. Anderson, Stephen A. Hambric, Jack W. Hughes Mar 2007

Grating Lobe Reduction In Transducer Arrays Through Structural Filtering Of Supercritical Plates, Brian E. Anderson, Stephen A. Hambric, Jack W. Hughes

Faculty Publications

The effect of placing a structural acoustic filter between water and the transducer elements of an array to help reduce undesirable grating lobes is investigated. A supercritical plate is mounted to transducer elements with a thin decoupling polyurethane layer between the transducers and the plate. The plate acts as a radiation/incidence angle filter to pass energy at angles near normal incidence, but suppress energy at large incidence angles. Grating lobe reduction is achieved at the expense of limiting the available steering of the main lobe. Within this steer angle limitation, the main lobe can be steered as normal while the …

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Bounds And Conditions: A Kolob In Our Solar System?, David D. Allred Mar 2007

Bounds And Conditions: A Kolob In Our Solar System?, David D. Allred

Faculty Publications

In 2003, Dialogue ran adjacent essays by two scientists, David Tolman and David Allred. The two Davids had been students together at Princeton, attending the same student ward. Decades after Princeton, Tolman had left Mormonism and Allred had stayed. Their essays are a fascinating juxtaposition. In the course of his piece, David Allred ventured for a few paragraphs into a discussion of the planet Jupiter and its role as a governor and protector in our solar system—a type of Kolob. Although the other author dismissed the topic as “fanciful physics,” my own interest was piqued. I asked Dr. Allred, who …

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