State Estimation and Fault Detection of an Aircraft Using Nonlinear Filters

An aircraft is a complex technical system, which has to satisfy high safety standards. The whole system of an aircraft has to be monitored because more and more actions happen automatically. Therefore unpredictable errors should be detected as fast as possible. In this work two different nonlinear filters namely the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the Particle Filter (PF) are studied for the application of fault detection with simultaneous estimations of states. Results show that EKF leads to better approximation for nearly linear problems, while PF yields a more accurate approximation for worst case scenarios. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Fast low-angle positive contrast steady-state free precession imaging of USPIO-labeled macrophages: theory and in vitro experiment

The feasibility of imaging macrophages labeled with ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles (USPIO) with fast low-angle positive contrast steady-state free precession (FLAPS) was investigated through theory and in vitro experiment. Human macrophage cells were labeled with USPIO and imaged at 1.5 T. The metric “visibility,” which combines magnitude and spatial extent of positive contrast, was used to evaluate the images. Negative contrast steady-state free precession (SSFP) and gradient-echo (GRE) imaging were also evaluated. Positive contrast was observed for relatively high concentrations of labeled cells for flip angles less than α=25°. Theoretical and experimental results indicate that positive visibility (VIS_POS) was maximized at α=10° and 15°. Low flip angle SSFP also provided negative contrast comparable to standard SSFP and GRE imaging. Results suggest that USPIO-labeled macrophages are capable of producing the conditions necessary for positive contrast with FLAPS at clinical field strength (1.5 T) and resolution (0.8×0.8×3 mm³).     

Banach spaces without local unconditional structure

For a large class of Banach spaces, a general construction of subspaces without local unconditional structure is presented. As an application it is shown that every Banach space of finite cotype contains eitherl ₂ or a subspace without unconditional basis, which admits a Schauder basis. Some other interesting applications and corollaries follow. The contribution of this author is a part of his Ph.D. Thesis written at the University of Alberta under the supervision of the second author. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Plasma free fatty acid profiling in a fish oil human intervention study using ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry

A rapid method was developed for the simultaneous profiling of 29 free fatty acids in plasma using ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC/ESI-MS/MS). Barium acetate was used as the cationization agent in the positive ion mode for sensitive multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) experiments. The cis- and trans-C18:1 and -C18:2 isomers were baseline-separated using two tandem reversed-phase C18 UPLC columns, while identification of two pairs of positional isomers of C18:3 and C20:3 required isomer-specific product ions, as the analytes were not chromatographically resolved. The assay linearity was greater than three orders of magnitude and correlation coefficients were >0.99; the limits of detections were typically less than 0.2 microM. The method was successfully applied to plasma free fatty acid profiling of samples from volunteers who participated in a randomized crossover study involving the administration of either placebo or fish oil capsules. The results clearly indicate the ability to measure the time profiles of the n-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in plasma for the volunteers given fish oil capsules while the concentrations of the other free fatty acids and the total free fatty acid concentration in plasma remained virtually constant.     

Chiral Bidentate (Phosphinophenyl)benzoxazine Ligands in Asymmetric Catalysis

The new chiral bidentate (phosphinoaryl)benzoxazine ligands 2 were applied in asymmetric catalysis. Rhodium and copper complexes catalyzed the hydrosilylation of acetophenone and [4+2] cycloadditions with moderate enantioselectivity. Iridium complexes were used to hyrogenate di‐, tri‐, and tetrasubstituted alkenes, giving products with moderate to high enantiomer excesses. Enantioselective allylic substitution and Heck reactions catalyzed by [(phosphinoaryl)benzoxazine]palladium complexes occurred with high enantioselectivities. The results were similar to those obtained with the corresponding dihydro(phosphinoaryl)oxazole ligands. Comparison of the structures of (diphenylallyl)(benzoxazine)palladium and (diphenylallyl)(dihydrooxazole)palladium complexes showed that the coordination geometries and the chiral environments of the metal centers are very similar, which explains why the enantioselectivities induced by the two ligand classes are in the same range.