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This paper presents a quad-band filter using centrally shorted-stub loaded resonators operated at the first and third passbands and stepped impedance resonators fixed at the second and fourth passbands. A special feed structure consisting of two stepped impedance lines is proposed, and a pair of parallel coupling lines is loaded at the center of the shorted-stub loaded resonators to enhance the couple of the first passband without affecting the third one.

To determine parathyroidectomy (PTx) rates in patients who satisfy the consensus guidelines for surgical treatment of primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT).Surgery for PHPT is recommended for all symptomatic patients and select asymptomatic patients meeting established consensus criteria. Adherence to the consensus guidelines has not been examined systematically, because of inadequate information regarding patients managed nonoperatively.All nonuremic patients with PHPT during the period 1995-2008 were identified using the Kaiser Permanente-Southern California laboratory database, encompassing 3.5 million individuals annually. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine predictors of PTx.We found 3388 patients with PHPT, of whom 265 (8%) were symptomatic (nephrolithiasis). Nephrolithiasis was predictive of PTx (OR 2.94 vs asymptomatic), with 51% of symptomatic patients undergoing surgery. Among asymptomatic patients, the proportion meeting consensus criteria was 39% during the early period (1995-2002) and 51% during the late period (2003-2008). The PTx rate for these patients exceeded that for asymptomatic patients not meeting consensus criteria but remained low (early 44% vs 19%, P0.0001; late 39% vs 16%, P0.0001). The following individual criteria were predictive of PTx: calcium11.5 mg/dL (OR 2.27), hypercalciuria (OR 3.28, P0.0001), and age50 years (OR 1.54, P0.0001). However, the absolute PTx rates associated with satisfaction of these criteria were in the 50% range. Bone density scores did not influence likelihood of PTx and renal impairment predicted against PTx (OR 0.35, P0.0001).The consensus guidelines regarding PHPT have not been followed in our study population. PTx appears to be underutilized in both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients.

In this paper, the design methodology for constructing novel dual-band hybrid couplers with arbitrary power division ratios is presented. The improved simplified composite right-/left-handed (ISCRLH) transmission line (TL) stub is adopted to imitate the conventional 90° section at the two specified frequencies with different characteristic impedances. An ISCRLH TL stub comprises two ISCRLH TL unit cells with input and output uniform TL sections at the two-port terminals, which possesses a degree of freedom in design parameters to assure the size miniaturization and the element realizability. Hybrid couplers operative at 2.45/5.2 GHz with various power division ratios are designed, verifying the proposed design methodology.

A novel dual-band filter based on dual-stubs loaded square loop resonator (DSLSLR) is presented in this paper. Firstly, two first- and second-order degenerate resonant modes in a loop resonator are excited through dual-stubs loading outside two opposite corners of the loop, which achieve the fundamental resonances of two bands. Next, two resonators are cascaded with proper coupling to further split the two resonant modes for dualband operation. Then two patches are added inside the other two opposite corners of the loop in order to improve the return loss of the second band. Such a novel dual-band filter operating at 2.9 GHz and 3.8 GHz is designed and fabricated.

A novel dual-mode filter composed of slot-line square loop resonator (SSLR) loaded with four slot-line stubs and four slot patches is presented. Two types of slot patches are loaded in each corner to split the degenerate modes flexibly. Two T-shaped feed lines are arranged orthogonally to provide a large external coupling as well as source-load coupling. A compact dual-mode SSLR filter with two upper transmission zeros operating at 3.55 GHz with 3.7% fractional bandwidth is designed and fabricated.

A novel low-profile folded-monopole antenna is proposed in this paper, which is composed of two metamaterial unit cells coupled with microstrip gap. It works under the zeroth-order resonance mode, and its vertical radiation vias can be fed in phase without loading any lumped surface mounted elements or inserting any auxiliary phase-shifting lines compared to previously reported designs. An equivalent circuit model for the novel antenna is presented, based on which an even-odd mode analysis is carried out, testifying that the even-mode current is predominant on the radiation vias at the zeroth-order frequency. According to the multiple folded monopole theory, there is a substantial increase in the radiation resistance, enabling the antenna to be well matched without adopting any external matching network. In order to verify the theoretical analyses, a prototype antenna of λ/10 × λ/20 × λ/10, operative at 3.0 GHz, are fabricated and measured, which can achieve radiation efficiency of above 90% and fully omnidirectional monopole-type radiation pattern.

Calibration-free laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (CF-LIBS) was employed for the quantitative analysis of slag. Nd:YAG laser ablation was performed in air. The laser-induced plasma emission was measured by an Echelle spectrometer equipped with an ICCD. The plasma temperature and electron number density were determined from Boltzmann plots and a Ca I line width, respectively. The assumption of local thermal equilibrium was validated by the Ne criterion. The concentration of oxides was obtained from the concentration of elements by using stoichiometric relation. The calculated oxide concentrations were compared with those obtained by XRF. The relative errors of major elements were less than 15%. The results indicate that this method can be employed for the analysis of major elements in multi-component complex materials without certified reference.

Brain computer interfaces based on P300 and sensory-motor rhythms are widely studied and recent advances show some interest in the combination of the two. In this paper, typical P300 paradigm is modified by adding animation guide of the finger press as a stimulus and by using different response strategies (silent counting and actual/imaginary left or right index finger press following the animation). Both P300 potentials and sensory-motor rhythms are directly exploited and discussed. Classification results showed that even under very demanding conditions, which was, 200 ms inter-stimulus interval of the P300 stimuli and actual/imaginary finger press once per 1.6s, the paradigm can evoke both P300 potentials and sensory-motor rhythms simultaneously. Actual finger press increased single trial P300 selection accuracy of different subjects by 5-29.5% compared with silent counting; imaginary finger press did not increase the P300 selection accuracy apparently for most subjects except the two who were very poor at counting task. This showed by using different interface design and adopting certain mental response strategies, the 'BCI illiteracy' may be cured. Also imaginary task had good performance of left versus right classification (with the best subject reached 81.1% of accuracy), which is an additional information that can be used to improve system performance.

This paper describes an empirical study where the focus was on discovering differences and similarities in students working on development of social applications versus students working on development of games using the same Android development platform. In 2010-2011, students attending the software architecture course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) could choose between four types of projects. Independently of the chosen type of project, all students had to go through the same phases, produce the same documents based on the same templates, and follow exactly the same process. This study focuses on one of projects—Android project, to see how much the application domain affects the course project independently of the chosen technology. Our results revealed some positive effects for the students doing game development compared to social application development to learn software architecture, like motivated to work with games, a better focus on quality attributes such as modifiability and testability during the development, production of software architectures of higher complexity, and more productive coding working for the project. However, we did not find significant differences in awarded grade between students choosing the two different domains. © 2012 Bian Wu and Alf Inge Wang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BACKGROUND The base excision repair (BER) pathway removes DNA damage caused by ionizing radiation, reactive oxidative species and methylating agents. ADPRT and APE1 are two important genes in the BER pathway. Several studies have evaluated the association between polymorphisms in the two BER genes (ADPRT Val762Ala and APE1 Asp148Glu) and breast cancer risk. However, the results are inconsistent. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis to derive a more precise estimation. A total of 8 studies were included in the meta-analysis (6 studies with 2,521 cases and 2,652 controls for ADPRT Val762Ala polymorphism and 5 studies with 2,539 cases and 2,572 controls for APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism). For ADPRT Val762Ala polymorphism, no obvious associations were found for all genetic models (Val/Ala vs. Val/Val: OR = 0.960, 95% CI = 0.845-1.090; Ala/Ala vs. Val/Val: OR = 0.897, 95% CI = 0.683-1.178; dominant model: OR = 0.953, 95% CI = 0.843-1.077; and recessive model: OR = 1.084, 95% CI = 0.838-1.403). For APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphism, also no obvious associations were found for all genetic models (Asp/Glu vs. Asp/Asp: OR = 0.947, 95% CI = 0.829-1.082; Glu/Glu vs. Asp/Asp: OR = 0.958, 95% CI = 0.813-1.129; dominant model: OR = 0.946, 95% CI = 0.835-1.072; and recessive model: OR = 1.004, 95% CI = 0.873-1.155). In the subgroup analysis by ethnicity or study design, still no obvious associations were found. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE This meta-analysis indicates that ADPRT Val762Ala and APE1 Asp148Glu polymorphisms are not associated with increased breast cancer risk.

For any tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) system, its performance is often degraded by long-term distortion and fluctuations of light intensity. The source of long-term distortion and the corresponding proposal are discussed at first in this paper. It is proved that the long-term distortion of the system is mainly induced by the change of wavelength dependent transfer function. A balanced optical path can be used to reduce it effectively. In order to decrease the disturbance of intensity fluctuation, a novel method for online correction is presented. It is developed according to the linear relation between the peaks of harmonic power spectra and the incident light intensity. It is demonstrated by the experiments and explained as residual sum frequency and difference frequency power of signal and reference after the lock-in amplifier. This method could achieve real-time light intensity correction with only little calculation. By using a 17.5m multi-pass cell, the experiments show that the system can achieve about 20ppmv stability for long-term continual monitoring. Allan variance indicates that the detection limit for short-term measurement is between 0.3ppmv and 1.5ppmv depending on the response time allowed by the instrument.

Two configurations of orthogonal double-pulse laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (DP-LIBS) and their corresponding signal enhancement mechanisms were investigated in this paper. For pre-ablation DP-LIBS configuration, the first laser was input in parallel to the sample surface while the second laser was perpendicularly input onto the sample surface. For reheating DP-LIBS configuration, the first laser was perpendicularly input onto the sample surface and the second laser was input in parallel to the sample surface. The signal intensities were enhanced using both orthogonal DP-LIBS configurations compared to single laser pulse LIBS. The differences of physical mechanisms involved for both schemes were analyzed using time-resolved spectroscopic technique. Continuous spectrum intensity was reduced using pre-ablation DP-LIBS excitation while it was increased with reheating DP-LIBS excitation. Nine consecutive intensity measurements were performed. Fifteen spectral lines were investigated. The average relative standard deviation of fifteen lines for pre-ablation, reheating DP-LIBS and single pulse LIBS was 5.83%, 1.69% and 4.82%, respectively. It was demonstrated that signal repeatability of reheating configuration was better than that of pre-ablation configuration. A correlation between the enhancements of emission line intensities and their excitation energy levels was established for reheating and pre-ablation double-pulse approach. It was found that reheating configuration showed better improvement in sensitivity at high excitation energy levels compared with pre-ablation configuration.

Quantitative analysis of trace elements such as manganese and chromium in steel was performed employing laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technique in the present paper. The experimental measurements indicate that the optimal delay, focal plane and detecting position from the sample surface are 2 micros, -3.5 mm and 1.5 mm,respectively. Mn I: 403.07 nm and Cr I : 427.48 nm were selected as the analytical lines and their contents in the target steel sample were analyzed with traditional quantitative analysis and internal standard methods. Comparison of the results with two kinds of quantitatively analytical methods show that the coefficients of determination gained by internal standard method are 0.998 and 0.979 which are much better than the results obtained by traditional quantitative analysis method. According to the established calibration curve by internal standard method the detection limits of manganese and chromium calculated are 0.005% and 0.040 6%, respectively.

This paper presents a pervasive game on Android platform where players can play a knowledge competition tour in groups in the city of Trondheim, and gain better understanding of the city through solving different tasks. From the evaluation, the result shows that the concept of using pervasive game in a learning context is an interesting concept that should be explored.

In order to provide interesting theoretical education of software engineering, this paper presents a collaborative learning environment on the base of a multiplayer online game platform. A matching mechanism is designed to facilitate the collaboration among students with complementary knowledge. The implemented educational game can be used as a supplementary tool for traditional classroom teaching.

This paper presents a literature survey about the method of creating/modifying a game on a game development framework (GDF) as an assignment to learn software engineering (SE), and we share our recommendation for choosing an appropriate GDFs.

A new strategy has been introduced to develop a catalytic asymmetric Pictet–Spengler-type reaction by replacing the aldehyde with an imine. A range of 4-(2-aminoaryl)indoles smoothly undergo the chiral phosphoric acid catalyzed asymmetric Pictet–Spengler-type reaction with imines at room temperature to give structurally diverse indolo[3,4-cd][1]benzazepines in good to excellent yields and ee.

Turn to switch: A mutant of phenylalanine aminomutase was engineered that can catalyze the regioselective amination of cinnamate derivatives (see scheme, red) to, for example, β-amino acids. This regioselectivity, along with the X-ray crystal structures, suggests two distinct carboxylate binding modes differentiated by C(β)-C(ipso) bond rotation, which determines if β- (see scheme) or α-addition takes place.

Learning through problem solving has received increased attention in constructivist learning, especially in ill-structured domains such as medicine [1]. Previous studies indicate knowledge construction and problem solving can reciprocate each other. However, this is not easily achieved, especially for complex problem solving. Temporal problem solving activities can be easily forgotten, and knowledge situated in problem solving experience may not be possibly retrieved and reused to solve new problems. This paper addresses the problem by proposing a dual mapping visualization approach to support the connection between problem solving and knowledge construction. Diagnostic problem solving in medical education is selected as the application domain, and abdominal pain is used as the case of the study to demonstrate the proposed approach in an online learning environment.

We developed a functional electrical stimulator for correcting the gait patterns of patients with foot-drop problem. The stimulating electrical pulses of the system are modulated to evoke contractions of the tibialis anterior muscle, by emulating the normal patterns. The modulation is adaptive, i.e. the system can predict the user's step frequency and the generated stimulation can match each step in real-time. In this study, step data from 11 young healthy volunteers were acquired, and five prediction algorithms were evaluated by the acquired data, including the average of Previous N steps (P-N), the Previous N th step (P-Nth), General Regression Neural Network (GRNN), Autoregressive (AR) and Kalman filter (KF). The algorithm with the best efficiency-accuracy trade-off (P-N, when N =5) was implemented in the FES system. System evaluation results obtained from a post-stroke patient with foot-drop showed that the system of this study demonstrated better performance on gait pattern correction than the methods widely adopted in commercial products.

The article presents a new method for motor-related EEG recognition which comprehensively optimizes the frequency-time-space features in a user-specific way. The method creates optimized time and frequency grids and adaptively selects channels for common spatial pattern (CSP) filters to enhance its power. The results show that the optimized features denotes a specific perspective to visualize frequency-time-spatial characteristics of motor-related EEGs, and can be used to achieve high classification accuracy.

This paper describes a case study of how a game project using the XNA Game Studio from Microsoft was implemented in a software architecture course. In this project, university students have to construct and design a type of software architecture, evaluate the architecture, implement an application based on the architecture, and test this implementation. In previous years, the domain of the software architecture project has been a robot controller for navigating a maze. Robot controller was chosen as the domain for the project, as there exist several papers and descriptions on reference architectures for managing mobile robots. This paper describes the changes we had to make to introduce an XNA game development project to the software architecture course, and our experiences from running a software architecture project focusing on game development and XNA. The experiences described in this paper are based on feedback from the course staff, the project reports of the students, and a mandatory course evaluation. The evaluation shows among other things that the majority of the students preferred the game project to the robot project, that XNA was considered to be suitable platform for a software architecture project, that the students found it useful to learn XNA and C#, and that some students were carried away when developing the game in the software architecture project. Using Game Development to Teach Software Architecture Copyright © 2011 A. I. Wang and B. Wu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

A novel quad-mode stepped impedance stub-loaded resonator is presented. The even–odd-mode method is applied twice to analyse the modal resonance characteristics due to its symmetry. All the four modes' equivalent circuits are quarter-wavelength stepped impedance resonators, so the proposed resonator has a compact size and higher harmonic frequencies. Stub-to-stub coupling is introduced to split two identical modes and produce two transmission zeros. A dual-band bandpass filter operating at 1.5 and 2.4 GHz is designed using the proposed resonator. The centre frequency and bandwidth of each passband can be controlled by tuning the corresponding physical dimensions, and a wide upper stopband is achieved. Finally, the designed filter was fabricated and measured, and the measured results have good agreement with the simulated ones.

This paper describes the implementation of an educational Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), named World of Wisdom (WoW). WoW is designed under the context of game design theory and game features extracted from surveys of popular MMORPGs. It is an open educational platform where students can “play exercises” instead doing them in the traditional paper way. Further, it provides an editor for teachers to create new game plots and content without the need of programming. As an aid for lectures, WoW can motivate the students to do the exercises more thoroughly. Finally, the paper presents both positive and negative experiences from the design and implementation of the game. We find that there are various theories that can benefit the design of educational MMORPGs. However, the key problem is how to choose and apply relevant theory to support the design, our experiences in the paper are examples that explore and explain this problem.

A brain computer interface (BCI) builds an additional pathway between the brain and external devices. This paper introduces a BCI system combined with virtual reality (VR) technology that allows users to navigate in the virtual apartment by motor imagery. Since performance in online sessions is sometimes found to decrease due to non-stationarity of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, we proposed a method based on adaptive probabilistic neural network (APNN) to overcome this phenomenon. Online experiments were carried out using the BCI system and offline analysis was conducted to make a comparison among different methods. Online results demonstrated that most subjects were able to perform well on the system, and offline analysis showed that the APNN was comparatively predominant.

This paper presents a location-aware educational game for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. The game, KnowledgeWar, is a quiz game where students can challenge each other in face-to-face or remote knowledge battles. The game contains a game lobby where players can see all who are connected, and the physical distance to them. The paper describes our experiences from developing KnowledgeWar and results from a user test followed by a questionnaire. The user test focused on usability, and how well the game was suited for learning. The results showed among other things that the game had high usability, it is helpful for summarizing topics, it can stimulate involvement and social interaction, and that smartphones are well suited for such games. The results also revealed that our game did not to stimulate students to attend more lectures or pay more attention during lectures.

Increased demands on air quality have created incentives for new methods to monitor gas pollution. In this paper we will present an online gas analyzer for industrial flue pollution monitoring based on tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) technology. Signal measurements with a sensitive device inevitably suffer from the predictable or unpredictable sources such as intensity fluctuations and the laser output wavelength dithers. In order to eliminate or at least reduce the measurement uncertainty and gain high reliability, a close-circle digital-control module with functions of digital signal generator, digital lock-in-amplifier (D-LIA), data acquisition and data processing has been developed to substitute the previous independent signal generator board, analog lock-in-amplifier and data acquisition card in our TDLAS system. With the help of the digital-control module and the advanced digital signal processing techniques the performance of the TDLAS system has demonstrated great improvement in long term field tests.

Gas analysis based on tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) provides features of high sensitivity, fast response and high selectivity. When target gas concentration is below a few parts-per-million spectrometers become more and more sensitive towards noise, interference, drift effects and background changes associated with low level signals. It is purpose of this paper to address some of the problems which are encountered at this low signal levels and to describe a signal processing strategy for gas monitoring with wavelet transform. Different parameters of wavelet by taking gas detection of H 2 S as an illustration are studied and an improved wavelet-based signal enhancement process is proposed based on the feature of TDLAS second-harmonic signal. The algorithm uses bior3.9 wavelet basic function and multi-resolution decomposition. The results show a plausible improvement in performance of TDLAS system and enhancement of detection limit from 10ppm to hundreds of ppb level under various noise conditions.

In this paper, the theoretical background of helical filter and multiplexer using manifold-couple approach are given. A novel equivalent circuit model is presented, and the improvment of the model is discussed. Finnally, giving a improvement optimization method that avoid the overall optimization of the multiplexer.

A compact ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filter (BPF) with notched band and improved out-of-band performance is presented. In the design, A UWB bandpass filter is built up using the hybrid microstrip and coplanar waveguide (CPW) structure. Open stubs are embedded on the bottom of filter to realize the narrow band which is to reject the undesired wireless local-area network (WLAN) radio signals. The center and bandwidth of the notched band can be controlled by adjusting the length and width of the stubs. A cross-shape patch is constructed to implement transmission zeros in the upper out-of-band so as to suppress the first spurious passband. The proposed UWB filter has the merits of compact size, flat group delay, good insertion/return loss, and good selectivity.

A method to generate an accurate rational model of microwave coupled resonator filters is presented. The Cauchy-TLS (total least squares) method has been used to achieve this goal. By the analysis of the relationship between the polynomial coefficients and the phase loading, it is easy to remove the loading effect. The resulting model can be used to extract the coupling structure of filters by synthesis or optimization. Two numerical examples are presented to validate the proposed method. One deals with numerical simulation data from a full-wave electromagnetic simulation and the other uses the measured data.

In this paper, we combine the theory which was put forward before and some aspects of the theories. Moreover, we do some exploration and potential applications in the simulation robot platform. In order to proposed the idea of use pitch matrix to predict variables and with the Prior theory reapplying in this area, we finally get some new methods like STA Model to predicting the points we need when the platform is running.

In this paper, we use an improved algorithm of artificial fish, and did the optimization in setting the border in the simulation platform, especially in the field of choosing ways of the robots, we use the Multi-threshold to reduce the uncontrollable actions when robots are in the game. And this method gives us an acceptable way to solve the issue.

A dual-band substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) filter is designed in this paper. This design is based on the frequency transformation from the normalized frequency domain to the actual frequency domain, which can calculate the coupling coefficients and the external quality factors analytically. In the realization, the dual-band resonator is utilized to replace each capacitance in the low-pass prototype circuit as the building block of the dual-band filter. To validate the method, a practical SIW dual-band filter is designed and fabricated with passbands at 5.85–5.95GHz and 6.05–6.15GHz, respectively, which has a maximum return loss of 15 dB in each passband.

This paper presents a novel dual-mode filter with asymmetric frequency response making use of square loop resonator DGS. Unlike the conventional dual-mode structure, the square ring resonator with a square patch attached at the corner is placed on the bottom plane, which is coplanar with the defected ground. Two T-shaped orthogonal feed lines are arranged on the top plane, which have an overlapped area with the resonator to excite and couple two degenerate modes. The proposed filter is found to have two transmission zeros on the high side of passband and takes on an asymmetric filtering property. Finally, a compact dual-mode square loop resonator DGS filter is designed and fabricated to operate at 2.68 GHz and its predicted results are verified in experiment.

This paper introduces how to extend Google android platform as a game development tool to learn software architecture based on the double stimulation method. It starts with the motivation to choose the android platform since most of students in software architecture course from NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) have experiences of using java and eclipse platform before they starts this course. And then it describes the design and construct of extended android platform, called “Sheep” framework. Further, it presents the application of the Sheep framework as second stimulus means integrated in the game exercises in the software architecture course. Finally, the paper discusses the contribution from the aspects of technology, game ideas and pedagogy.

By replacing a single active-site residue Cys107 with Ser in phenylalanine aminomutase (PAM), the enzyme gained tyrosine aminomutase (TAM) activity while retaining PAM activity and high enantioselectivity. This engineered enantioselective TAM also catalyzed formation of β-tyrosine from p-coumaric acid and may prove to be useful for the synthesis of enantiopure β-tyrosine and its derivatives.

An approach is described for the synthesis of aromatic alpha- and beta-amino acids that Uses phenylalanine aminomutase to catalyze a highly enantioselective addition of ammonia to substituted cinnamic acids. The reaction has a broad scope and yields Substituted alpha- and beta-phenylalanines with excellent enantiomeric excess. The regioselectivity of the conversion is determined by substituents present at the aromatic ring. A box model for the enzyme active site is proposed, derived from the influence of the hydrophobicity of substituents on the enzyme affinity toward various substrates.

The mushroom-like EBG structures with different number of vias are presented and investigated. Theories are given to analyze the parameter ratio relations between the two-via structure and the one-via structure. After being validated the correctness, the direct transmission method is used to derive the characteristics of the structures. Then the two-via EBG structure is cascaded with the one-via EBG structure, and the results show that the band-gap of the cascaded structure almost covers the bands of the two structures with different number of vias, which validates the fact that the bandwidth of the multi-via cascaded structure can be broadened effectively.

An analytical synthesis method for triple-passband microwave filters is presented in this paper. This method is based on a frequency transformation from the normalized frequency domain to the actual frequency domain. The coupling coefficients and the external quality factors can be calculated analytically with no need of optimization. A triple-band resonator is utilized to replace each capacitance in the low-pass prototype circuit as the building block of the triple-passband filter. To validate the synthesis theory, an example triple-passband filter is designed and fabricated with three passbands at 3.0–3.1 GHz, 3.2–3.3 GHz and 3.4–3.46 GHz, respectively, which has a maximum return loss of 20 dB in each passband.

This paper describes the motivation and application of a Microsoft XNA extended library- XQUEST (XNA QUick & Easy Starter Template) in a software architecture course. Further, it presents the evaluation of the usability and usefulness of the XQUEST library in the context of a software architecture course. XQUEST was designed and implemented to save students' time in development projects offering flexible components. The evaluation was based on the survey of students questionnaires. Finally, the questionnaire results were analyzed in relation to three aspects: suitability, usefulness and usability. In many aspects, the results show that XQUEST enhances XNA in suitability as a teaching aid in software engineering learning, and can be a useful and helpful extension to understand XNA. The results also show that XQUEST is easy to use and save students time in development, thus giving students more time to focus on the practice of course theory.

Variations on muscular and tendinous connections of the hand occur frequently in the human population and are often discovered during routine surgical procedures and cadaveric dissections. A knowledge of such anomalies is important to the physician in order to avoid unintentional damage to healthy tendons during surgical procedures. In addition, accessory tendons have the potential to be used in the repair or replacement of damaged tendons through surgical transfer or transplantation. Here we describe a unique variant of the extensor pollicis tertius muscle that has its origin at the proximal end of the extensor indicis muscle and inserts on the tendon of the extensor pollicis longus at the proximal shaft of the proximal phalanx of the thumb.

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a very important gas generated in the industrial process; therefore to implement CO concentration on-line monitoring is a key factor for industrial process control. Tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) is a high sensitive, high selective and fast trace gas detection technique. With the features of tunability and narrow linewidth of distributed feedback (DFB) laser and by precisely tuning its wavelength to a single isolated absorption line of the gas, TDLAS technique can be utilized to accurately perform online gas concentration monitoring with very high sensitivity. In this paper, a system for online monitoring of CO concentration is developed by our group employing TDLAS technique. The experimental results are present and discussed in this report. The characteristics of the system are: the sensitivity, 10ppm; detection accuracy, 0.02%; long term stability, 1%.

Healthcare organizations are facing the challenge of delivering high-quality services through effective process management. There have been frequent changes of clinical processes and increased interactions between different functional units. To facilitate the dynamic and interactive processes in healthcare organizations, an agent-based cognitive approach is presented in this study. The emphasis is placed on dynamic clinical and administrative process management, and knowledge building as the foundation for process management. The treatment of primary open angle glaucoma is used as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of approach for healthcare process management.