Green's function estimation in speckle using the decomposition of the time reversal operator: application to aberration correction in medical imaging

The FDORT method (French acronym for decomposition of the time reversal operator using focused beams) is a time reversal based method that can detect point scatterers in a heterogeneous medium and extract their Green's function. It is particularly useful when focusing in a heterogeneous medium. This paper generalizes the theory of the FDORT method to random media (speckle), and shows that it is possible to extract Green's functions from the speckle signal using this method. Therefore it is possible to achieve a good focusing even if no point scatterers are present. Moreover, a link is made between FDORT and the Van Cittert-Zernike theorem. It is deduced from this interpretation that the normalized first eigenvalue of the focused time reversal operator is a well-known focusing criterion. The concept of an equivalent virtual object is introduced that allows the random problem to be replaced by an equivalent deterministic problem and leads to an intuitive understanding of FDORT in speckle. Applications to aberration correction are presented. The reduction of the variance of the Green's function estimate is discussed. Finally, it is shown that the method works well in the presence of strong interfering scatterers.     

Discontinuous shear thickening in the presence of polymers adsorbed on the surface of calcium carbonate particles

In the presence of dispersant molecules currently used in cement industry and based on polyethylene oxide (PEO), we found a strong discontinuous shear thickening (DST) at high volume fraction in suspensions of calcium carbonate particles. The transition was reversible and the critical shear rate and shear stress for which this instability appears are reported versus the volume fraction of particles. A model of repulsive forces between polymers, taking into account the thickness of the polymer layer and the density of adsorption on the surface of the particles, can explain the differences of critical stresses observed between these three dispersant molecules. In particular, it explains why a small polymer densely adsorbed can be more efficient to repel the transition at higher stress than a larger molecule less densely adsorbed. Above the transition, we find that the suspension presents a special kind of stick-slip instability with even the presence of a negative shear rate under constant applied stress. A model is proposed which well predicts this regime by taking into account both the inertia of the apparatus and the viscoelasticity of the suspension.     

Modal characteristics of few-mode silica-based photonic crystal fibres

The modal characteristics of silica-based photonic crystal fibres (PCF) are examined through a scalar modal analysis combined with an effective V-parameter model using a finite-difference method. Cut off frequencies of the lowest-order modes and the normalised dispersion curves are given and are found to be quasi-independent of the hole-size-to-pitch ratio. A simple and accurate empirical relation for the cutoff wavelength is given for the first higher-order mode for fibres with hole-size-to-pitch ratio below 0.7. These results should be very useful in designing PCF's for various applications.     

Drag and lift reduction of a 3D bluff-body using active vortex generators

In this study, a passive flow control experiment on a 3D bluff-body using vortex generators (VGs) is presented. The bluff-body is a modified Ahmed body (Ahmed in J Fluids Eng 105:429–434 1983) with a curved rear part, instead of a slanted one, so that the location of the flow separation is no longer forced by the geometry. The influence of a line of non-conventional trapezoïdal VGs on the aerodynamic forces (drag and lift) induced on the bluff-body is investigated. The high sensitivity to many geometric (angle between the trapezoïdal element and the wall, spanwise spacing between the VGs, longitudinal location on the curved surface) and physical (freestream velocity) parameters is clearly demonstrated. The maximum drag reduction is ?12%, while the maximum global lift reduction can reach more than ?60%, with a strong dependency on the freestream velocity. For some configurations, the lift on the rear axle of the model can be inverted (?104%). It is also shown that the VGs are still efficient even downstream of the natural separation line. Finally, a dynamic parameter is chosen and a new set-up with motorized vortex generators is proposed. Thanks to this active device. The optimal configurations depending on two parameters are found more easily, and a significant drag and lift reduction (up to ?14% drag reduction) can be reached for different freestream velocities. These results are then analyzed through wall pressure and velocity measurements in the near-wake of the bluff-body with and without control. It appears that the largest drag and lift reduction is clearly associated to a strong increase of the size of the recirculation bubble over the rear slant. Investigation of the velocity field in a cross-section downstream the model reveals that, in the same time, the intensity of the longitudinal trailing vortices is strongly reduced, suggesting that the drag reduction is due to the breakdown of the balance between the separation bubble and the longitudinal vortices. It demonstrates that for low aspect ratio 3D bluff-bodies, like road vehicles, the flow control strategy is much different from the one used on airfoils: an early separation of the boundary layer can lead to a significant drag reduction if the circulation of the trailing vortices is reduced.     

Specific interaction between anionic phospholipids and milk bovine component PP3 and its 119–135 C-terminal fragment

The behaviour of component PP3, a bovine milk protein with emulsifying properties, was investigated at the air–water interface and in a lipidic environment using the monolayer technique. The amphipathic 119–135 C-terminal fragment of PP3 was also tested since we proposed, on the basis of structural analysis, that this region is probably responsible for the surface-active properties of the protein. This hypothesis was confirmed by the tensiometric measurements at the air–water interface in which the addition of the C-terminal peptide increased the surface pressure with a similar amplitude as the whole protein. Penetration measurements into lipidic monolayers indicated that the insertion of component PP3 and its C-terminal peptide is the highest with anionic phospholipids in a gel state. Moreover, the electrostatic attractions provided by anionic phospholipids are essential for the peptide interaction. We also showed by Fourier transform infrared spectra study, that the peptide displays a β-type conformational state in aqueous solution and in the presence of solvant or anionic phospholipid (DPPG). In contrast, the protein adopts in aqueous solution an helical conformation which remains the dominant conformational state in the presence of DPPG although the apparition of β-structure is detected.     

Basic Aspects of Polymer Degradation

Knowledge on the mechanisms by which polymers degrade on exposure to natural or artificial ageing has considerably increased during the past few years. One reason for this is the development of novel experimental procedures and analytical techniques. The analyses of the chemical changes permit determining the main degradation routes applicable to the degradation of the properties of materials and ensures the relevance of the laboratory experiments.     

Photooxidation of copolymers of fluorinated olefins and allyl or vinyl ethers

This article reports the results on the photooxidation mechanisms of two copolymers of fluorinated olefins and allyl or vinyl ethers. It is shown that the presence of the fluorine atoms influences strongly both the orientation of the reaction and the photooxidation kinetics. Due to the neighbouring fluorine atoms, the methylene groups in α-position of the oxygen of the ether groups are not equivalent regarding oxidation and the secondary carbon becomes more oxidable than the tertiary one. Because these unexpected results were obtained, the study has been extended to non fluorinated polyethers. On the basis of the results obtained, a general mechanism of the primary oxidation of polyethers is given, and the role played by the fluorine atoms on the orientation of the reactions is discussed.     

A Method for the Selection of Catalytic Activity Using Phage Display and Proximity Coupling

Phage display has been used extensively for the selection of proteins with binding sites for ligands. Here, as illustrated with the example of DNA polymerase, the use of phage display for selection according to catalytic activity is described. Active enzymes are selected by binding of the reaction product P (see the scheme) cross-linked in the proximity of the enzyme E that catalyzed the reaction with the substrate S.     

Meta-Strategy for Learning Tuning Parameters with Guarantees

Online learning methods, similar to the online gradient algorithm (OGA) and exponentially weighted aggregation (EWA), often depend on tuning parameters that are difficult to set in practice. We consider an online meta-learning scenario, and we propose a meta-strategy to learn these parameters from past tasks. Our strategy is based on the minimization of a regret bound. It allows us to learn the initialization and the step size in OGA with guarantees. It also allows us to learn the prior or the learning rate in EWA. We provide a regret analysis of the strategy. It allows to identify settings where meta-learning indeed improves on learning each task in isolation.     

From star-shaped to dendritic poly(ethylene oxide)s: Toward increasingly branched architectures by anionic polymerization

Polymers with dendritic structure are a category of macromolecular architectures that has received considerable attention in the last decade. These polymers, also referred to as dendrimers, exhibit a degree of branching equal to unity. Interest in dendrimers whose branching points are linked to each other by generations of macromolecular size is in contrast quite new. This paper describes a new synthetic strategy which allows access to poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) with dendritic structure. PEO dendrimers with different degree of compactness have been synthesized upon modifying the size of successive generations.