Study on reproductive endocrinology of human placenta (III)--Hormonal regulation of progesterone production by trophoblast tissue of first trimester.

The effect of hormones on progesterone secretion by 6-8 week human trophoblast tissue cultured in serum-free medium has been investigated. GnRH at low concentration (10(-10)-10(-8) mol/L) stimulated progesterone secretion, while high dose (10(-6)-10(-5) mol/L) produced inhibitory effect. The progesterone secretion could be significantly decreased by addition of anti-hCG antiserum or monoclonal anti-hCG IgG in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Various concentrations of TRH, PGE2, PGF2 alpha, testosterone and estradiol were found to be ineffective. These data indicate clearly that progesterone production by human trophoblast tissue at early gestation stage is under the modulation of GnRH and hCG.     

Quonic realization of the deformed Heisenberg-Weyl algebra

A consistent realization of an operatorial deformed Heisenberg-Weyl (HW) algebra is given. The explicit construction of the deformation matrix is discussed. The corresponding generalized Fock-like space is analyzed.     

Photon statistics in the stochastic limit of QED without dipole approximation

In this paper we investigate the distribution of the Heisenberg evolution of the number operator in the stochastic limit of the quantum electromagnetic field without dipole approximation. We prove that in this case the usual Poisson statistics of the free fields has to be replaced by a hypergeometric series whose coefficients we compute explicitly. The physical effects of the new statistics should manifest themselves in situation which are not yet in the relativistic regime, but in which the dipole approximation is no longer valid. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Slow cyclotron instability in a high-power backward-wave oscillator

The linear dispersion relation of a backward-wave oscillator (BWO), derived earlier by the authors, is modified to include effects of RF surface current at the beam-vacuum interface. This modified dispersion relation results in an unstable interaction between the slow cyclotron mode (SCM) and the structure mode in addition to the conventional Cherenkov instability caused by the slow space charge mode. Numerical analysis is then carried out using parameters of a BWO experiment at University of Maryland. Fine structure of the SCM instability is elucidated. The analysis indicates that BWO radiation would not be suppressed near cyclotron absorption in an infinitely long system.     

Structural study and electrical properties of Zr-doped Nd<Subscript>2</Subscript>Sn<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>7</Subscript> pyrochlore compounds

Nd₂Sn₂O₇ pyrochlores with the substitution of Zr⁴⁺ were prepared by conventional ceramic double sintering technique. The single-phase formation was confirmed by X-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction techniques. Relative intensity calculations for X-ray diffraction analysis were performed for oxygen positional parametersx = 0.331 and 0.375, while Rietveld refinements were employed for neutron diffraction data. The neutron diffraction study revealed that there are only two anion sites with 48f and 8b positions. This indicates that the 8a site, i.e. O(3) sublattice, is completely vacant and the structure is a perfect cubic pyrochlore with space group Fd3m (O _h ⁷ ). From the conductivity measurements, it is observed that the electronic conductivity dominates from room temperature up to about 525 K and forT > 525 K, the oxygen ion conduction dominates the charge transport in these compositions. Complex impedance spectroscopy indicates the existence of grain and grain boundary as two separate elements.     

Optimisation of fault-tolerant fabric-cutting schedules using genetic algorithms and fuzzy set theory

In apparel industry, manufacturers developed standard allowed minutes (SAMs) databases on various manufacturing operations in order to facilitate better scheduling, while effective production schedules ensure smoothness of downstream operations. As apparel manufacturing environment is fuzzy and dynamic, rigid production schedules based on SAMs become futile in the presence of any uncertainty. In this paper, a fuzzification scheme is proposed to fuzzify the static standard time so as to incorporate some uncertainties, in terms of both job-specific and human related factors, into the fabric-cutting scheduling problem. A genetic optimisation procedure is also proposed to search for fault-tolerant schedules using genetic algorithms, such that makespan and scheduling uncertainties are minimised. Two sets of real production data were collected to validate the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the genetically optimised fault-tolerant schedules not only improve the operation performance but also minimise the scheduling risks.     

Fixed-sign solutions for a system of singular focal boundary value problems

We consider a system of focal boundary value problems where the nonlinearities may be singular in the independent variable and may also be singular in the dependent arguments. Using Schauder fixed point theorem, we establish criteria such that the system of boundary value problems has at least one fixed-sign solution.     

Semiparametric estimation of the long-range parameter

We study two estimators of the long-range parameter of a covariance stationary linear process. We show that one of the estimators achieve the optimal semiparametric rate of convergence, whereas the other has a rate of convergence as close as desired to the optimal rate. Moreover, we show that the estimators are asymptotically normal with a variance, which does not depend on any unknown parameter, smaller than others suggested in the literature. Finally, a small Monte Carlo study is included to illustrate the finite sample relative performance of our estimators compared to other suggested semiparametric estimators. More specifically, the Monte-Carlo experiment shows the superiority of the proposed estimators in terms of the Mean Squared Error. The first author research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) reference number: R000238212. The second author research was funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology of Japan, reference number: 09CE2002 and B(2)10202202.     

Natural convections in conjugated single and double enclosures

The natural convection in single and double conjugated enclosures are numerically investigated. The single and double enclosures are formed by low conductance walls with finite thickness. The outside vertical surfaces of the conducting walls are of the third kind of boundary condition while the top and bottom outside surfaces are adiabatic. The problem studied is characterized by a dominant horizontal temperature gradient and the thermal boundary conditions at the cavity surfaces can not be specified in priori. Numerical results reveal the characteristics in such kind of enclosures and show the importance of the thermal boundary conditions on the natural convection in enclosures. It is also found that the natural convections in the conjugated double enclosures are basically the same, with a major difference in their fluid temperature levels.     

Parallel processing of remotely sensed data: Application to the ATSR-2 instrument

Massively parallel computational paradigms can mitigate many issues associated with the analysis of large and complex remotely sensed data sets. Recently, the Beowulf cluster has emerged as the most attractive, massively parallel architecture due to its low cost and high performance. Whereas most Beowulf designs have emphasized numerical modeling applications, the Parallel Image Processing Environment (PIPE) specifically addresses the unique requirements of remote sensing applications. Automated, parallelization of user-defined analyses is fully supported. A neural network application, applied to Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 (ATSR-2) data shows the advantages and performance characteristics of PIPE.