A 119 GHz planar Schottky diode mixer for a space application

A planar single-ended GaAs Schottky diode mixer has been designed, built, and tested at 119 GHz. The mixer front end includes also a waveguide filter for image rejection, and a temperature compensated ring filter. Measurements at room temperature showed a conversion loss of 7 dB and a noise temperature of 900 K (SSB). At 100 K the measured noise temperature of the mixer was 500 K (SSB).     

Antenna phase pattern measurements at millimeter wave frequencies using the differential phase method with only one power meter

The differential phase measurement method has been improved to need the use of only one power meter instead of three power meters. This enables accurate antenna phase pattern measurements with a simplified set-up, accompanied by the reduction in cost. All advantages of the differential phase measurement method are still also available, e.g. there is no need to phase lock oscillators or to use rotary joints. The measurement results for an antenna at 110 GHz are presented. A good agreement with earlier data was obtained.     

Nonsurjective nearisometries of Banach spaces

We obtain sharp approximation results for into nearisometries between L^p spaces and nearisometries into a Hilbert space. Our main theorem is the optimal approximation result for nearsurjective nearisometries between general Banach spaces.     

Effects of spatial smoothing on inter-subject correlation based analysis of FMRI

This study evaluates the effects of spatial smoothing on inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis for FMRI data using the traditional model based analysis as a reference. So far within ISC analysis the effects of smoothing have not been studied systematically and linear Gaussian filters with varying kernel widths have been used without better knowledge about the effects of filtering. Instead, with the traditional general linear model (GLM) based analysis, the effects of smoothing have been studied extensively.     

Behavior of thin rectangular ANCF shell elements in various mesh configurations

The absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) is characterized by being developed specifically for dynamic analysis of large deformation problems. The objective of the study is to investigate how the shape of the initial mesh configuration influences the obtained numerical solution. After a thorough review of three available formulations, they are used in three different convergence studies. Initially a reference study is conducted to determine how the ANCF performs in an uniform and rectangular mesh. Subsequently, the ANCF methods sensitivity to irregular mesh is investigated and finally, the ability of the ANCF method to describe curved structures is evaluated. This study concludes that thin ANCF shell elements are sensitive to both the initial shape and their loading condition. Furthermore, both the initial configuration and the loading condition affect how the ANCF-based models converge. It is suggested that models containing thin ANCF shell elements are subjected to extensive validation studies, before they are used in a design process.     

Linear water-wave problem in a pond with a shallow beach

We consider the linear water-wave problem in a bounded water-basin with a shallow beach. In spite of the boundedness of the domain, the spectrum of the problem may have a continuous component, if the beach of the basin has a cuspidal form. Following the approach and methods of an earlier paper by S.A.Nazarov and the second named author, we improve the results of the citation by determining the spectrum in an open borderline case under weaker geometric assumptions.     

Spectral Estimates for Resolvent Differences of Self-Adjoint Elliptic Operators

The concept of quasi boundary triples and Weyl functions from extension theory of symmetric operators in Hilbert spaces is developed further and spectral estimates for resolvent differences of two self-adjoint extensions in terms of general operator ideals are proved. The abstract results are applied to self-adjoint realizations of second order elliptic differential operators on bounded and exterior domains, and partial differential operators with δ-potentials supported on hypersurfaces are studied.     

Option pricing for large agents

This paper considers arbitrage-free option pricing in the presence of large agents. These large agents have a significant market power, and their trading strategies influence the dynamics of the financial asset prices. First, a simple asset pricing model in the presence of large agents is presented. Then a nonlinear partial differential equation is found for the prices of European options in the model. The unit option price depends on the large agent's asset holdings. Finally, a game model is introduced for the interaction between different market players. In this game, the outstanding number of options, as well as the option price, is found as a Nash equilibrium.     

Brain MRI tissue classification based on local Markov random fields

A new method for tissue classification of brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the brain is proposed. The method is based on local image models where each models the image content in a subset of the image domain. With this local modeling approach, the assumption that tissue types have the same characteristics over the brain needs not to be evoked. This is important because tissue type characteristics, such as T1 and T2 relaxation times and proton density, vary across the individual brain and the proposed method offers improved protection against intensity non-uniformity artifacts that can hamper automatic tissue classification methods in brain MRI. A framework in which local models for tissue intensities and Markov Random Field (MRF) priors are combined into a global probabilistic image model is introduced. This global model will be an inhomogeneous MRF and it can be solved by standard algorithms such as iterative conditional modes. The division of the whole image domain into local brain regions possibly having different intensity statistics is realized via sub-volume probabilistic atlases. Finally, the parameters for the local intensity models are obtained without supervision by maximizing the weighted likelihood of a certain finite mixture model. For the maximization task, a novel genetic algorithm almost free of initialization dependency is applied. The algorithm is tested on both simulated and real brain MR images. The experiments confirm that the new method offers a useful improvement of the tissue classification accuracy when the basic tissue characteristics vary across the brain and the noise level of the images is reasonable. The method also offers better protection against intensity non-uniformity artifact than the corresponding method based on a global (whole image) modeling scheme.     

Singular Indefinite Sturm-Liouville Operators with a Spectral Gap

Singular Sturm-Liouville operators with the indefinite weight sgn(·) and a symmetric potential which has a positive limit at ∞ have a gap in the essential spectrum. Under an additional condition it is shown that in this gap are no eigenvalues. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)