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This study demonstrates controllable random lasing emissions in a dye-doped nematic liquid crystal (DDNLC)-infiltrated microcapillary. The emission wavelength of the micro tube laser can be adjusted by changing the focusing position of the pumped pulses on the center or the periphery of the liquid crystal region of the microcapillary. In addition, with doping azo-dyes in the DDNLC of the micro tube laser, optical controllability of the lasing intensity and wavelength can be further achieved. The controllable micro tube laser may find highly widespread photonic applications in multicolor emitting sources, and vibration and UV sensors.

Circular microphone arrays (CMAs) are sufficient in many immersive audio applications because azimuthal angles of sources are considered more important than the elevation angles in those occasions. However, the fact that CMAs do not resolve the elevation angle well can be a limitation for some applications which involves three-dimensional sound images. This paper proposes a 2.5-dimensional (2.5-D) CMA comprised of a CMA and a vertical logarithmic-spacing linear array (LLA) on the top. In the localization stage, two delay-and-sum beamformers are applied to the CMA and the LLA, respectively. The direction of arrival (DOA) is estimated from the product of two array output signals. In the separation stage, Tikhonov regularization and convex optimization are employed to extract the source amplitudes on the basis of the estimated DOA. The extracted signals from two arrays are further processed by the normalized least-mean-square algorithm with the internal iteration to yield the source signal with improved quality. To validate the 2.5-D CMA experimentally, a threedimensionally printed circular array comprised of a 24-element CMA and an eight-element LLA is constructed. Objective perceptual evaluation of speech quality test and a subjective listening test are also undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to compare algorithms for solving inverse problems generally encountered in spatial audio signal processing. Tikhonov regularization is typically utilized to solve overdetermined linear systems in which the regularization parameter is selected by the golden section search (GSS) algorithm. For underdetermined problems with sparse solutions, several iterative compressive sampling (CS) methods are suggested as alternatives to traditional convex optimization (CVX) methods that are computationally expensive. The focal underdetermined system solver (FOCUSS), the steepest descent (SD) method, Newton's (NT) method, and the conjugate gradient (CG) method were developed to solve CS problems more efficiently in this study. These algorithms were compared in terms of problems, including source localization and separation, noise source identification, and analysis and synthesis of sound fields, by using a uniform linear array (ULA), a uniform circular array (UCA), and a random array. The derived results are discussed herein and guidelines for the application of these algorithms are summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying mechanobiology in three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures better recapitulates cell behaviors in response to various types of mechanical stimuli in vivo. Stiffening of the extracellular matrix resulting from cell remodeling potentiates many pathological conditions, including advanced cancers. However, an effective tool for measuring the spatiotemporal changes in elastic properties of such 3D cell cultures without directly contacting the samples has not been reported previously. We describe an ultrasonic shear-wavebased platform for quantitatively evaluating the spatiotemporal dynamics of the elasticity of a matrix remodeled by cells cultured in 3D environments. We used this approach to measure the elasticity changes of 3D matrices grown with highly invasive lung cancer cells and cardiac myoblasts, and to delineate the principal mechanism underlying the stiffening of matrices remodeled by these cells. The described approach can be a useful tool in fields investigating and manipulating the mechanotransduction of cells in 3D contexts, and also has potential as a drug-screening platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]