Shape representation is one of the key issues in a computer vision system. One important group of shape representations is multiple scale representation. In past years, many studies have been taken focusing on such group. Most of them used some operations such as smoothing, bluring or grouping to gradually obtain representation with diierent degrees of detail. Based on these operations, they us...

BACKGROUND The present study investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the 4A > C and -349C > T single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in bone morphogenetic protein receptor type IA (BMPR-IA) gene, which significantly associated with the occurrence and the extent of ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) in the cervical spine. METHODS The SNPs in BMPR-IA gene were g...

First-excursion times have been developed extensively in the literature for oscillators; one major application is structural dynamics of buildings. Using the fact that most closed-loop systems operate with a moderate to high damping ratio, we have derived a new procedure for calculating first-excursion times, for a class of linear continuous, time-varying systems. In several examples we show th...

In this paper we investigate the one-dimensional hyperbolic mean curvature flow for closed plane curves. More precisely, we consider a family of closed curves F : S × [0, T ) → R which satisfies the following evolution equation ∂F ∂t (u, t) = k(u, t) ~ N(u, t)− ▽ρ(u, t), ∀ (u, t) ∈ S1 × [0, T ) with the initial data F (u, 0) = F0(u) and ∂F ∂t (u, 0) = f(u) ~ N0, where k is the mean curvature an...

We consider a discrete-time, linear time varying (LTV), multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) system with nu inputs and ny outputs. The system is known to be asymptotically stable, but the exact dynamics and the way they change over time are not known. We denote the vector of control inputs at time step t ∈ Z by u(t) = [u1(t), . . . , unu(t)] T , where ui(t) ∈ R, i = 1, . . . , nu are the indi...

With a large integrated luminosity expected at the Tevatron, a next-to-leading order (NLO) calculation is no longer sufficient to describe the data which yield the precision measurement of M W , etc. Thus, we extend the Collins-Soper-Sterman resummation formalism, for on-shell vector boson production , to correctly include the effects of the polarization and the width of the vector boson to the...

In this paper the necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the solution of a system of parameter varying linear inequalities of the form ( ) ( ) t t ≥ A x b for all t T ∈ , where T is an arbitrary set, x is the unknown vector, ( ) t A is a known triangular Toeplitz matrix and ( ) t b is a known vector. For every t T ∈ the corresponding inequality defines a polyhedron, in which the solu...

Recombinant vaccinia viruses (rVV) have been extensively used as vaccines, but there is little information about the total magnitude of the VV-specific T-cell response and how this compares to the immune response to the foreign gene(s) expressed by the rVV. To address this issue, we quantitated the T-cell responses to both the viral vector and the insert following the infection of mice with VV ...

Currently, lentiviral vectors for research and gene therapy are produced from 293-T cells that are transiently transfected with plasmids encoding the vector and helper functions. However, transiently transfected vectors as well as the presence of SV40 virus large T-antigen (T-Ag) cause serious technical and safety considerations. We aimed to exploit single copy integration sites in the HEK293 g...

Chagas' disease is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and causes potentially life-threatening disease of the heart and gastrointestinal tract. The southern half of the United States contains enzootic cycles of T. cruzi, involving 11 recognized triatomine vector species. The greatest vector diversity and density occur in the western United States, where woodrats are the most comm...