An easy-to-fabricate but very efficient fiber-to-waveguide coupler is theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. In this design, light from a single-mode fiber can be butt-coupled into a single-mode high-index-contrast Si3N4/SiO2 waveguide with a measured coupling efficiency of 96 % at the wavelength of 1550 nm, and > 90 % in the spectral range from 1450 nm to 1650 nm. Large horizo...

In a recent paper (Iannuzzi et al 2006 Monolithic fiber-top sensor for critical environments and standard applications Appl. Phys. Lett. 88 053501) we have presented the principle of the fiber-top position sensor, having a monolytical structure carved out of a single-mode optical fiber. The device alleviates sensing in a critical environment via interferometric readout, and because of its monol...

Tendon exhibits nonlinear stress-strain behavior that may be partly due to movement of collagen fibers through the extracellular matrix. While a few techniques have been developed to evaluate the fiber architecture of other soft tissues, the organizational behavior of tendon under load has not been determined. The supraspinatus tendon (SST) of the rotator cuff is of particular interest for inve...

(A), 10% BG (B) and 60% BG (C) ELAC fibers. Scale bar = 2 μm. (D) Stress vs. strain curve for mechanical assessment of nBG incorporated ELAC fibers. Incorporation of Nano-sized Bioactive Glass Enhances the Mechanical Properties of Electrochemically Aligned Collagen Fibers Meet J. Pastakia, Thuy-Uyen Nguyen, Vipuil Kishore Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Florida I...

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) originates from the interaction between upconverted fields from individual scatterers. This renders SHG microscopy highly sensitive to molecular distribution. Here, we aim to take advantage of the difference in SHG between aligned and partially aligned molecules to probe the degree of molecular order during biomechanical testing, independently of the absolute or...

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) electrospun membranes have been prepared with different NaY zeolite contents up to 32%wt. Inclusion of zeolites induces an increase of average fiber size from ~200 nm in the pure polymer up to ~500 nm in the composite with 16%wt zeolite content. For higher filler contents, a wider distribution of fibers occurs leading to a broader size distributions between the previou...

We performed a Hong–Ou–Mandel interference experiment with 1.5μm band photon pairs generated through spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in two independent silicon wire waveguides (SWWs). To maintain the long-term stability of the coupling between the SWWs and optical fibers without a fiber alignment system, we employed fiber module SWWs installed in a rigid metallic case with fiber array inter...

We present the concept of fiber-flux density for locally quantifying white matter (WM) fiber bundles. By combining scalar diffusivity measures (e.g., fractional anisotropy) with fiber-flux measurements, we define new local descriptors called Fiber-Flux Diffusion Density (FFDD) vectors. Applying each descriptor throughout fiber bundles allows alongtract coupling of a specific diffusion measure w...

In this document we describe the entry that came in the third place in the ”Supervised Learning Match Expert” challenge of the ICDM’09 Data Mining Contest. The main method used in our approach is a recently developed tree ensemble algorithm called Additive Groves. Code for Additive Groves is publicly available on the author’s website. 1. Supervised Learning Challenge The data for this competiti...

When muscle fibers contract, blood flow requirements increase along their entire length. However, the organization of capillary perfusion along muscle fibers is unclear. The microvascular unit (MVU) is defined as a terminal arteriole and the group of capillaries it supplies. We investigated whether neighboring MVUs along the fiber axis perfused the same group of muscle fibers by using the paral...