3-D Unitary ESPRIT: Accurate attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles with a hexagon-shaped ESPAR array

Accurate estimation of the attitude of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is crucial for their control and displacement. Errors in the attitude estimate may misuse the limited battery energy of UAVs or even cause an accident. For attitude estimation, proprioceptive sensors such as inertial measurement units (IMUs) are widely applied, but they are susceptible to inertial guidance error. With antenna arrays currently being installed in UAVs for communication with ground base stations, we can take advantage of the array structure in order to improve the estimates of IMUs via data fusion. In this paper, we therefore propose an attitude estimation system based on a hexagon-shaped 7-element electronically steerable parasitic antenna radiator (ESPAR) array. The ESPAR array is well-suited for installment in the UAVs with broad wings and short bodies. Our proposed solution returns an estimation for the pitch and roll based on the inter-element phase delay estimates of the line-of-sight path of the impinging signal over the antenna array. By exploiting the parallel and centrosymmetric structure in the hexagon-shaped ESPAR array, the 3-dimensional Unitary ESPRIT algorithm is applied for phase delay estimation to achieve high accuracy as well as computational efficiency. We devise an attitude estimation algorithm by exploiting the geometrical relationship between the UAV attitude and the estimated phase delays. An analytical closed-form expression of the attitude estimates is obtained by solving the established simultaneous nonlinear equations. Simulations results show the feasibility of our proposed solution for different signal-to-noise ratio levels as well as multipath scenarios.     

A two steps solution approach to solving large nonlinear models: application to a problem of conjunctive use

This article describes a solution method of solving large nonlinear problems in two steps. The two steps solution approach takes advantage of handling smaller and simpler models and having better starting points to improve solution efficiency. The set of nonlinear constraints (named as complicating constraints) which makes the solution of the model rather complex and time consuming is eliminated from step one. The complicating constraints are added only in the second step so that a solution of the complete model is then found. The solution method is applied to a large-scale problem of conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater resources. The results obtained are compared with solutions determined with the direct solve of the complete model in one single step. In all examples the two steps solution approach allowed a significant reduction of the computation time. This potential gain of efficiency of the two steps solution approach can be extremely important for work in progress and it can be particularly useful for cases where the computation time would be a critical factor for having an optimized solution in due time.     

Spectroscopic Multicomponent Analysis Using Multi-objective Optimization for Variable Selection

The multiple determination tasks of chemical properties are a classical problem in analytical chemistry. The major problem is concerned in to find the best subset of variables that better represents the compounds. These variables are obtained by a spectrophotometer device. This device measures hundreds of correlated variables related with physicocbemical properties and that can be used to estimate the component of interest. The problem is the selection of a subset of informative and uncorrelated variables that help the minimization of prediction error. Classical algorithms select a subset of variables for each compound considered. In this work we propose the use of the SPEA-II （strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm II）. We would like to show that the variable selection algorithm can selected just one subset used for multiple determinations using multiple linear regressions. For the case study is used wheat data obtained by NIR （near-infrared spectroscopy） spectrometry where the objective is the determination of a variable subgroup with information about E protein content （%）, test weight （Kg/HI）, WKT （wheat kernel texture） （%） and farinograph water absorption （%）. The results of traditional techniques of multivariate calibration as the SPA （successive projections algorithm）, PLS （partial least square） and mono-objective genetic algorithm are presents for comparisons. For NIR spectral analysis of protein concentration on wheat, the number of variables selected from 775 spectral variables was reduced for just 10 in the SPEA-II algorithm. The prediction error decreased from 0.2 in the classical methods to 0.09 in proposed approach, a reduction of 37%. The model using variables selected by SPEA-II had better prediction performance than classical algorithms and full-spectrum partial least-squares.     

Flatness-Based Control of a Single Qubit Gate

This work considers the open-loop control problem of steering a two-level quantum system from any initial to any final condition. The model of this system evolves on the state space , having two inputs that correspond to the complex amplitude of a resonant laser field. A symmetry preserving flat output is constructed using a fully geometric construction and quaternion computations. Simulation results of this flatness-based open-loop control are provided.     

A novel electromyographic signal simulator for muscle contraction studies

Mathematical simulation has been widely used in biomedical and biological sciences. In the case of the surface electromyographic (SEMG) activity, some models have been proposed aiming to study muscle contraction strategies that are used during different tasks and conditions. Most of SEMG simulators are based on energy modulation of a Gaussian noise. This work proposes a novel simulator in which the user-defined parameters are associated with the motor units (MUs) recruitment and their firing rate. Comparison between the mean spectrum of real SEMG signals collected in isometric contraction of the muscle biceps brachii and the mean spectrum obtained from simulated SEMG signals showed a good agreement, pointing the proposed simulator seems to be capable to generate consistent electromyographic signals in time and frequency domains and that can be used in many studies, in particular in the evaluation of automatic methods aimed to detect muscular contraction.     

A Genre-Aware Approach to Focused Crawling

Focused crawlers have as their main goal to crawl Web pages that are relevant to a specific topic or user interest, playing an important role for a great variety of applications. In general, they work by trying to find and crawl all kinds of pages deemed as related to an implicitly declared topic. However, users are often not simply interested in any document about a topic, but instead they may want only documents of a given type or genre on that topic to be retrieved. In this article, we describe an approach to focused crawling that exploits not only content-related information but also genre information present in Web pages to guide the crawling process. This approach has been designed to address situations in which the specific topic of interest can be expressed by specifying two sets of terms, the first describing genre aspects of the desired pages and the second related to the subject or content of these pages, thus requiring no training or any kind of preprocessing. The effectiveness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed approach are demonstrated by a set of experiments involving the crawling of pages related to syllabi of computer science courses, job offers in the computer science field and sale offers of computer equipments. These experiments show that focused crawlers constructed according to our genre-aware approach achieve levels of F1 superior to 88%, requiring the analysis of no more than 65% of the visited pages in order to find 90% of the relevant pages. In addition, we experimentally analyze the impact of term selection on our approach and evaluate a proposed strategy for semi-automatic generation of such terms. This analysis shows that a small set of terms selected by an expert or a set of terms specified by a typical user familiar with the topic is usually enough to produce good results and that such a semi-automatic strategy is very effective in supporting the task of selecting the sets of terms required to guide a crawling process.     

New insights into the morphology of Trypanosoma cruzi reservosome

Reservosomes are late endosomes present only in members of the Schizotrypanum subgenus of the Trypanosoma genus and are defined as the site of storage of endocytosed macromolecules and lysosomal enzymes. They have been extensively described in Trypanosoma cruzi epimastigote: are bounded by a membrane unit, present an electron-dense protein matrix with electron-lucent lipid inclusions, being devoid of inner membranes. Here we performed a detailed ultrastructural analysis of these organelles using a variety of electron microscopy techniques, including ultrathin sectioning, uranyl acetate stained preparations, and freeze fracture, either in intact epimastigotes or in isolated reservosomes. New informations were obtained. First, both isolated and in situ reservosomes presented small profiles of inner membranes that are morphologically similar to the membrane surrounding the organelle. In uranyl acetate stained preparations, internal membrane profiles turned out to be longer than they appeared in ultrathin section images and traversed the organelle diameter. Internal vesicles were also found. Second, endocytosed cargo are not associated with internal vesicles and reach reservosomes on board of vesicles that fuse with the boundary membrane, delivering cargo directly into reservosome lumen. Third, electron-lucent bodies with saturated lipid core surrounded by a membrane monolayer and with unusual rectangular shape were also observed. Fourth, it was possible to demonstrate the presence of intramembranous particles on the E face of both internal vesicles and the surrounding membrane. Collectively, these results indicate that reservosomes have a complex internal structure, which may correlate with their multiple functions.     

Simple tests for multi-criteria optimality

In this paper we present two tests which can decide whether a given pointx ₀ ^N is locally efficient or not with respect to a given finite set of real valued continuously differentiable functions defined on ^N . Examples indicate that the tests may fail on a nowhere dense set.     

Developed profile of holographically exposed photoresist gratings

A simulation of the profile of holographically recorded structures in photoresists is performed. In addition to its simplicity this simulation can be used to take into account the effects that arise from exposure, photosensitization, development, and resolution of positive photoresists. We analyzed the effects of isotropy of wet development, nonlinearity of the photoresist response curve, background light, and standing waves produced by reflection at the film-substrate interface by using this simulation, and the results agree with the experimentally recorded profiles.     

Design Optimization of Composite Prosthetic Tubes Using GA-ANN Algorithm Considering Tsai-Wu Failure Criteria

The investigation of possible failures in composite materials is a matter of very great importance, and the Tsai-Wu criterion is an effective criterion for analyzing those flaws in anisotropic materials and defining whether the material at a given load will or will not suffer structural failure. In this study, an optimization procedure is proposed to minimize the maximum value of Tsai-Wu of laminated composite tubes subject to axial loading. Artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms are chosen as optimization tools. The results of this study show that the developed algorithm converges faster. Then, the maximum Tsai-Wu value is used as the objective function and the fiber orientations are the constraints in the optimization process. The results yielded by them are compared and discussed. Optimal results are compared with respect to the usual initial design. The design approach is recommended for structures where composites are the key load-carrying members such as orthopedic prosthesis.