Determination of urine saturation with computer program EQUIL 2 as a method for estimation of the risk of urolithiasis

Two measures of weight cycling and indexes of psychological functioning were examined in a large sample of dieters. History of weight cycling was assessed to include number of dieting attempts, total lifetime weight lost and regained, and number of weight cycles over 20 lb (9.1 kg). Experience of weight cycling measured perception of being a yo-yo dieter and perceived success at maintaining past weight losses. Experience was more strongly related than history to all psychological measures. Further, when controlling for the effects of age, body mass index, and experience, the relation between history and the psychological variables was nonsignificant. This finding suggests that an individual's perception of being a weight cycler may be more related to psychological problems than the actual number of pounds lost and regained over time.     

Integrated Dual-Display-Based 3G Mobile Phone / Wireless Terminal

In this paper, we describe HW and SW features of the developed prototype of a hybrid 3G mobile phone and wireless terminal, which provides integral video projection onto two VGA/2 displays that, when put side-by-side, form the integrated display with the ratio of the overall width to its overall height, equal to 4:3, so providing the integral video VGA format and enabling visual presentation of standard full-size web pages, PC mainstream SW screens (such as e.g. the ones of e-mail clients), multi-media content etc. When not in use, the displays can be fold back one onto each other, so preserving the industry-standard dimensions of the device. The two displays that share the image provide it with overall resolution of 640 x 480 pixels per inch. The device is driven by Texas Instruments OMAP 2420 multimedia processor with ARM1136 core and Linux operating system. In addition, the device is equipped with specially developped prototypes of unique spring/microgenerator-based battery charger as well as with ultra-thin mountable foil-based QWERTY keyboard.     

A Nanophotonic Structure Containing Living Photosynthetic Bacteria

Photosynthetic organisms rely on a series of self‐assembled nanostructures with tuned electronic energy levels in order to transport energy from where it is collected by photon absorption, to reaction centers where the energy is used to drive chemical reactions. In the photosynthetic bacteria Chlorobaculum tepidum, a member of the green sulfur bacteria family, light is absorbed by large antenna complexes called chlorosomes to create an exciton. The exciton is transferred to a protein baseplate attached to the chlorosome, before migrating through the Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex to the reaction center. Here, it is shown that by placing living Chlorobaculum tepidum bacteria within a photonic microcavity, the strong exciton–photon coupling regime between a confined cavity mode and exciton states of the chlorosome can be accessed, whereby a coherent exchange of energy between the bacteria and cavity mode results in the formation of polariton states. The polaritons have energy distinct from that of the exciton which can be tuned by modifying the energy of the optical modes of the microcavity. It is believed that this is the first demonstration of the modification of energy levels within living biological systems using a photonic structure.     

Classical to quantum in large-number limit

We construct a quantumness witness following the work of Alicki & van Ryn (AvR). We reformulate the AvR test by defining it for quantum states rather than for observables. This allows us to identify the necessary quantities and resources to detect quantumness for any given system. The first quantity turns out to be the purity of the system. When applying the witness to a system with even moderate mixedness, the protocol is unable to reveal any quantumness. We then show that having many copies of the system leads the witness to reveal quantumness. This seems contrary to the Bohr correspondence, which asserts that, in the large-number limit, quantum systems become classical, whereas the witness shows quantumness when several non-quantum systems, as determined by the witness, are considered together. However, the resources required to detect the quantumness increase dramatically with the number of systems. We apply the quantumness witness for systems that are highly mixed but in the large-number limit that resembles nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems. We make several conclusions about detecting quantumness in NMR-like systems.     

Modeling OFDM irreducible BER with impact of CP length and CFO in multipath channel with small delay dispersion

In this paper, we propose an analytical model for estimating the irreducible bit error ratio (BER) in multipath channel with small‐extent delay dispersion, such as indoor, where the signal‐to‐noise ratio is high, implying dominance of inter‐symbol interference as error‐generating mechanism. Both channel and overall orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols are modeled stochastically, resulting with novel expression for the residual BER prediction that is shown to analytically distinguish power delay profiles with equal delay spreads but having different profile shapes. In addition, the model could simply accommodate insertion of cyclic prefix onto the OFDM symbol, providing a means for either testing adequacy of any applied (standard) cyclic prefix length or finding its optimal value as a compromise between the performance enhancement achieved by inserting cyclic prefix and the consequently added redundancy. Finally, the model was modified as to include the analysis of effects of subcarrier frequency inaccuracy or Doppler shift, by adding additional equivalent delay dispersion with equal effect on BER degradation, while considering the system virtually free of carrier frequency offset. All analytically achieved results and conclusions are tested and successfully verified by conducted extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experimental Modeling of Large Pile Groups in Sloping Ground Subjected to Liquefaction-Induced Lateral Flow: 1-G Shaking Table Tests

A series of 1-g shaking table model tests were carried out to study the behavior of pile groups embedded in sloping ground subjected to lateral flow of liquefied soil. Two different configurations of pile groups: large (6×6 and 11×11) and small (3×3), were considered. The models were subjected to the liquefaction-induced large ground deformation to investigate the effect of several parameters on the response of pile groups and mechanism of lateral flow. These parameters comprise amplitude, frequency, and direction of input motion; density and slope of ground; and the thickness of non-liquefiable layer at the surface. The outcome of this parametric study reveals the importance of above mentioned factors which should be taken into account for analysis and design purposes. In addition, the results from the experiments clearly illustrate that in sloping ground configuration, both front (in upstream) and rear (in downstream) row piles receive greater lateral forces than middle row piles. This finding is attributed to the distribution of soil motion (displacement and velocity) of the liquefied soil in the model. As a result, installation of additional pile rows in front and behind an existing pile foundation can be considered as an effective retrofitting technique. Finally, soil-pile interaction was evaluated by running experiments with different pile spacings, and reliability of the JRA 2002 design manual in estimation of liquefaction-induced lateral force on piles is evaluated.     

Vacuum induced berry phase: Theory and experimental proposal

Abstract

We investigate quantum effects in geometric phases arising when a two-level system is interacting with a quantized electromagnetic field. When the system is adiabatically driven along a closed loop in the parameter space, signatures of the field quantization are observable in the geometric phase. We propose a feasible experiment to measure these effects in cavity QED and also analyse the semi-classical limit, recovering the usual Berry phase results.