Lossless Medical Image Compression by Using Difference Transform

This paper introduces a new method of compressing digital images by using the Difference Transform applied in medical imaging. The Difference Transform algorithm performs the decorrelation process of image data, and in this way improves the encoding process, achieving a file with a smaller size than the original. The proposed method proves to be competitive and in many cases better than the standards used for medical images such as TIFF or PNG. In addition, the Difference Transform can replace other transforms like Cosine or Wavelet.     

Multiple Keys for a Single Lock: The Unusual Structural Plasticity of the Nucleotidyltransferase (4′)/Kanamycin Complex

The most common mode of bacterial resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics is the enzyme‐catalysed chemical modification of the drug. Over the last two decades, significant efforts in medicinal chemistry have been focused on the design of non‐ inactivable antibiotics. Unfortunately, this strategy has met with limited success on account of the remarkably wide substrate specificity of aminoglycoside‐modifying enzymes. To understand the mechanisms behind substrate promiscuity, we have performed a comprehensive experimental and theoretical analysis of the molecular‐recognition processes that lead to antibiotic inactivation by Staphylococcus aureus nucleotidyltransferase 4′(ANT(4′)), a clinically relevant protein. According to our results, the ability of this enzyme to inactivate structurally diverse polycationic molecules relies on three specific features of the catalytic region. First, the dominant role of electrostatics in aminoglycoside recognition, in combination with the significant extension of the enzyme anionic regions, confers to the protein/antibiotic complex a highly dynamic character. The motion deduced for the bound antibiotic seem to be essential for the enzyme action and probably provide a mechanism to explore alternative drug inactivation modes. Second, the nucleotide recognition is exclusively mediated by the inorganic fragment. In fact, even inorganic triphosphate can be employed as a substrate. Third, ANT(4′) seems to be equipped with a duplicated basic catalyst that is able to promote drug inactivation through different reactive geometries. This particular combination of features explains the enzyme versatility and renders the design of non‐inactivable derivatives a challenging task.     

Finite size effects on structure and magnetism in mass-selected CoPt nanoparticles

In this paper, the one-way absorption property in one-dimensional dielectric/metal photonic crystal structure with a dielectric defect layer is studied. The effects of incident angle and state of polarization on one-way absorption behaviour of the anti-resonant (AR) mode are investigated. The normally incident wave from left to right propagation is totally allowed to penetrate to the structure but right to left propagation totally reflected at the same wavelength. It is found that, with increasing of the incident angle, the AR mode shifts to the lower wavelengths and its intensity decreases. Simultaneously, another AR mode with reversed one-way property appears at higher wavelength. The one-way behaviour on absorption is observed at the both states of polarizations but is localized on different wavelengths. Those effects, are suggesting that the proposed structure can be used as a direction sense polarization splitter or reflector/antireflector device.     

A theoretical study of hemiacetal formation from the reaction of methanol with derivatives of CX3CHO (X = H,F, Cl,Br and I)

A theoretical study of the hemiacetal formation reaction between methanol and CX₃CHO (X = H, F, Cl, Br, and I) has been carried out using density functional theory and Becke, three‐parameter, Lee–Yang–Parr/6‐311++G(d,p) computational methods. The stationary points of the reaction between the isolated molecules and the reaction catalyzed by an additional methanol molecule have been characterized. Because the final products present a stereogenic center, the potential autocatalysis of the reaction has been examined and also the possibility of spontaneous generation of chirality when the hemiacetal molecules are involved in the transition state structure. High barriers are found in the reaction between the isolated molecules that are reduced by the assistance of an additional molecule (methanol or hemiacetal product). The reactions catalyzed by the hemiacetal products show higher barriers than the one catalyzed by methanol. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating nonlinear dynamics from time series: The influence of symmetries and the choice of observables

When a dynamical system is investigated from a time series, one of the most challenging problems is to obtain a model that reproduces the underlying dynamics. Many papers have been devoted to this problem but very few have considered the influence of symmetries in the original system and the choice of the observable. Indeed, it is well known that there are usually some variables that provide a better representation of the underlying dynamics and, consequently, a global model can be obtained with less difficulties starting from such variables. This is connected to the problem of observing the dynamical system from a single time series. The roots of the nonequivalence between the dynamical variables will be investigated in a more systematic way using previously defined observability indices. It turns out that there are two important ingredients which are the complexity of the coupling between the dynamical variables and the symmetry properties of the original system. As will be mentioned, symmetries and the choice of observables also has important consequences in other problems such as synchronization of nonlinear oscillators. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.     

A railway track dynamics model based on modal substructuring and a cyclic boundary condition

This article presents a technique for modelling the coupled dynamics of a railway vehicle and the track. The method is especially useful for simulating the dynamics of high speed trains running on nonlinear tracks. The main hypothesis is a cyclic system: an infinite track on which there is an infinite set of identical vehicles spaced at a regular interval of distance. Thus the main problems of the finite-length track models (e.g. the waves that reflect at the end of the track and interact with the vehicle; and the time interval of integration must be shorter than the track length divided by the velocity) are avoided. The flexibility of the method can be observed from the case studies presented in the present work: a vehicle passing over a hanging sleeper, and the vehicle-track dynamics for different ballast compaction cases. The results show the influence of the hanging sleeper gap on the wheel-rail contact forces, and the bending moment at the sleeper for different ballast compaction cases.     

A New Derivation of the Quantum Navier–Stokes Equations in the Wigner–Fokker–Planck Approach

A quantum Navier–Stokes system for the particle, momentum, and energy densities is formally derived from the Wigner–Fokker–Planck equation using a moment method. The viscosity term depends on the particle density with a shear viscosity coefficient which equals the quantum diffusion coefficient of the Fokker–Planck collision operator. The main idea of the derivation is the use of a so-called osmotic momentum operator, which is the sum of the phase-space momentum and the gradient operator. In this way, a Chapman–Enskog expansion of the Wigner function, which typically leads to viscous approximations, is avoided. Moreover, we show that the osmotic momentum emerges from local gauge theory.