Search results for: HIGH GAIN
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Corrosion Inhibition of Aluminium Alloy AA6063-T5 by Vanadates: Local Surface Chemical Events Elucidated by Confocal Raman Micro-Spectroscopy
PublicationChemical interactions between aqueous vanadium species and aluminium alloy AA6063-T5 were investigated in vanadate-containing NaCl solutions. Confocal Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy experiments were utilised to gain insight into the mechanism of corrosion inhibition by vanadates. A greenish-grey coloured surface layer, consisting of V+4 and V+5 polymerized species, was seen to form on the alloy surface, especially on...
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Multi-Beam Antenna for Ka-Band CubeSat Connectivity Using 3-D Printed Lens and Antenna Array
PublicationIn this paper, the design of a passive multi-beam lens antenna is proposed for the CubeSat space communication system as an alternative application of a 2-D microstrip antenna array that has originally been designed for a 39 GHz 5 G MU-MIMO system. The half-ellipsoid lens is 3-D printed using stereolithography (SLA) technology. The antenna prototype is capable of selecting the main beam between 16 different directions with a gain...
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Regional quality contests based on business excellence models – Pomeranian case study
PublicationCompetitions based on models of organizational excellence have significant potential. Organizations participating in these initiatives have the chance not only to get marketing benefits, but also gain comprehensive knowledge about their management systems. Moreover, thanks to the structure of models of excellence an organization can plan in detail the improvement activities in its main processes. The aim of the authors is to analyze...
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Selection of material for infiltration of non-stoichiometric Sr0.95Ti0.3Fe0.7O3-δ
Open Research DataThe porous electrodes used for the infiltration were prepared from A-site non-stoichiometric Sr0.95Ti0.3Fe0.7O3-δ synthesized by the conventional solid state reaction method. Screen printed electrodes (0.5 cm2) on CGO-20 substrate, were fired at 800 °C for 2 hours in an air atmosphere. Infiltration of the scaffolds was performed by a water-based precursor...
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Distributed protection against non-cooperative node behavior in multi-hop wireless networks
PublicationAn important security problem in today's distributed data networks is the prevention of non-cooperative behavior i.e., attacks consisting in the modification of standard node operation to gain unfair advantage over other system nodes. Such a behavior is currently feasible in many types of computer networks whose communication protocols are designed to maximize the network performance assuming full node cooperation. Moreover, it...
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Dynamic unattended measurement based routing algorithm for diffServ architecture
PublicationDynamic routing is very important in terms of assuring QoS in today's packet networks especially for streaming and elastic services. Existing solutions dedicated to dynamic routing are often too complicated and seem to be not usable in real time traffic scenarios where transferred traffic may vary significantly. This was the main reason for research and new routing mechanism proposal which should apply to today's packet networks....
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Speciation of Iron in the Aquatic Environment
PublicationIron is one of the basic metals occurring in the aquatic environment and it is considered a macroelement with regard to live organisms. This metal has a broad range of applications that, together with factors conditioning its chemical transitions, results in the occurrence of many iron species in water. Depending on water and land development type, as well as the use of water for household and industrial purposes, iron may be found...
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Low cost microwave X-band generator
PublicationA low cost microwave X-band generator for educational purposes was designed and built. Its simple construction and user's interface makes it suitable for a student laboratory.The generator is based on a single frequency conversion concept. It uses a digitally tunable PLL chip for intermediate frequency generation and an active frequency multiplier for frequency conversion. The generator covers 9,7 - 11 GHz part of the X frequency...
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Elemental and tight monogamy relations in nonsignaling theories
PublicationPhysical principles constrain the way nonlocal correlations can be distributed among distant parties. These constraints are usually expressed by monogamy relations that bound the amount of Bell inequality violation observed among a set of parties by the violation observed by a different set of parties. We prove here that much stronger monogamy relations are possible for nonsignaling correlations by showing how nonlocal correlations...
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Green Chemistry in Higher Education: State of the Art, Challenges, and Future Trends
PublicationNowadays, there is increasing interest in global sustainability, and thus, university students would like to know how human actions affect the health status of our planet. This is mainly due to their basic knowledge of problems such as global warming and greenhouse gases. Students would like to gain knowledge on how to safeguard the earth for future generations. This must involve changes in education programs at interested institutions...
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Support for Employees with ASD in the Workplace Using a Bluetooth Skin Resistance Sensor–A Preliminary Study
PublicationThe application of a Bluetooth skin resistance sensor in assisting people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), in their day-to-day work, is presented in this paper. The design and construction of the device are discussed. The authors have considered the best placement of the sensor, on the body, to gain the most accurate readings of user stress levels, under various conditions. Trial tests were performed on a group of sixteen...
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Design and optimization of a novel miniaturized low-profile circularly polarized wide-slot antenna
PublicationThis paper presents a novel structure of a compact circularly polarized (CP) antenna. CP is obtained using a parasitic quasi-rectangular strip placed coplanar to the feedline. A ground plane perturbation combined with the asymmetric geometry of the coplanar waveguide ground planes is utilized to excite additional CP modes. All antenna dimensions are rigorously optimized to achieve the best possible performance in terms of the impedance...
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Leader election for anonymous asynchronous agents in arbitrary networks
PublicationWe consider the problem of leader election among mobile agents operating in an arbitrary network modeled as an undirected graph. Nodes of the network are unlabeled and all agents are identical. Hence the only way to elect a leader among agents is by exploiting asymmetries in their initial positions in the graph. Agents do not know the graph or their positions in it, hence they must gain this knowledge by navigating in the graph...
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Using Synchronously Registered Biosignals Dataset for Teaching Basics of Medical Data Analysis – Case Study
PublicationMedical data analysis and processing strongly relies on the data quality itself. The correct data registration allows many unnecessary steps in data processing to be avoided. Moreover, it takes a certain amount of experience to acquire data that can produce replicable results. Because consistency is crucial in the teaching process, students have access to pre-recorded real data without the necessity of using additional equipment...
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Complementary green analytical procedure index (ComplexGAPI) and software
PublicationIt is not easy to find appropriate tools for the evaluation of the “green”nature of analytical methodologies which involve the use of compounds, materials, or chemicals manufactured prior to the analytical step. Here, we propose a new metric for the evaluation of analytical procedures based on the GAC attributes. The proposed solution expands on the well-known green analytical procedure index by adding additional fields pertaining...
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Focus on Misinformation: Improving Medical Experts’ Efficiency of Misinformation Detection
PublicationFighting medical disinformation in the era of the global pandemic is an increasingly important problem. As of today, automatic systems for assessing the credibility of medical information do not offer sufficient precision to be used without human supervision, and the involvement of medical expert annotators is required. Thus, our work aims to optimize the utilization of medical experts’ time. We use the dataset of sentences taken...
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Optimal and suboptimal algorithms for identification of time-varying systems with randomly drifting parameters
PublicationNoncausal estimation algorithms, which involve smoothing, can be used for off-line identification of nonstationary systems. Since smoothingis based on both past and future data, it offers increased accuracy compared to causal (tracking) estimation schemes, incorporating past data only. It is shown that efficient smoothing variants of the popular exponentially weighted least squares and Kalman filter-based parameter trackers can...
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Self-advocates with intellectual disability about their work as social educators – a qualitative Polish study
PublicationThe paper presents the opinions of self-advocates with mild intellectual disability about their work as social educators – public self-advocates raising disability awareness. Six semi-structured individual interviews were conducted. Data was analyzed within the framework of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The themes which emerged from the interviews comprise: the motives of educators to work as self-advocates, opportunities...
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Adaptive Optimal Discrete-Time Output-Feedback Using an Internal Model Principle and Adaptive Dynamic Programming
PublicationIn order to address the output feedback issue for linear discrete-time systems, this work suggests a brand-new adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) technique based on the internal model principle (IMP). The proposed method, termed as IMP-ADP, does not require complete state feedback, merely the measurement of input and output data. More specifically, based on the IMP, the output control problem can first be converted into a stabilization...
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CONTROL OF THE WAVES IN A TOWING TANK WITH THE USE OF A BLACK-BOX MODEL
PublicationThe paper describes an adaptive control system of the waves, implemented in the Ship Design and Research Centre, CTO S.A. The purpose of generating the waves in the towing tank is the modelling of the environmental conditions during hydrodynamic model tests. The tests are performed on scale models of towed or free running ships, anchored structures like oil rigs or bottommounted structures, e.g. wind turbines. In the towing tank...
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Chemometric Evaluation of WWTPs’ Wastewaters and Receiving Surface Waters in Bulgaria
PublicationWastewater treatment plant (WWTP) installations are designed and operated to reduce the quantity of pollutants emitted to surface waters receiving treated wastewaters. In this work, we used classical instrumental studies (to determine chemicals and parameters under obligations put with Directive 91/271/EEC), ecotoxicological tools (Sinapis alba root growth inhibition (SA-RG) and Heterocypris incongruens mortality (MORT) and growth...
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Optimization of biocorrosion resistance and mechanical properties of PM Ti–XAl–2Fe–3Cu alloys by response surface methodology
PublicationIn the current study, the biocorrosion resistance and mechanical properties of the Ti–XAl–2Fe–3Cu (wt%) (X = 6, 4, 2 wt%) alloy produced by powder compact extrusion of blended elemental powders were optimized by using the response surface methodology in order to gain the best combination of processing parameters. To run the optimization process, central composite design with three equal levels of oxygen, hydrogen and aluminum was...
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Reliable Multi-Stage Optimization of Antennas for Multiple Performance Figures in Highly-Dimensional Parameter Spaces
PublicationDesign of modern antenna structures needs to account for multiple performance figures and geometrical constraints. Fulfillment of these calls for the development of complex topologies described by a large number of parameters. EM-driven tuning of such designs is mandatory yet immensely challenging. In this letter, a new framework for multi-stage design optimization of multi-dimensional antennas with respect to several performance...
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What matters most to patients? On the Core Determinants of Patient Experience from Free Text Feedback
PublicationFree-text feedback from patients is increasingly used for improving the quality of healthcare services and systems. A major reason for the growing interest in harnessing free-text feedback is the belief that it provides richer information about what patients want and care about. The use of computational approaches such as structural topic modelling for analysing large unstructured textual data such as free-text feedback from patients...
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Improved Bandwidth of Microstrip Wide-Slot Antenna Using Gielis Curves
PublicationThe development of a broadband printed wide-slot antenna based on Gielis curves is presented in this article. The printed wide-slot antenna can be conveniently reshaped to achieve ultra-wideband performance by using superformula. The distinct advantage of employing the superformula in design of wide-slot antenna lies in its ability to define nearly any geometric shape including non-standard, complex and non-intuitive for the wide-slot...
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Multichannel self-optimizing narrowband interference canceller
PublicationThe problem of cancellation of a nonstationary sinusoidal interference, acting at the output of an unknown multivariable linear stable plant, is considered. No reference signal is assumed to be available. The proposed feedback controller is a nontrivial extension of the SONIC (self-optimizing narrowband interference canceller) algorithm, developed earlier for single-input, single-output plants. The algorithm consists of two loops:...
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Comparison of selected algorithms for scheduling workflow applications with dynamically changing service availability
PublicationThis paper compares the quality and execution times of several algorithms for scheduling service based workflow applications with changeable service availability and parameters. A workflow is defined as an acyclic directed graph with nodes corresponding to tasks and edges to dependencies between tasks. For each task, one out of several available services needs to be chosen and scheduled to minimize the workflow execution time and...
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Personal Brand Authenticity and Social Media: The Top 5 Football Players’ Case
Publicationhe authenticity is a key factor which attracts the interest of young consumers in the more and more dominant virtual world full of “fake news”,“fake images”, and “fake impressions”. The celebrity authenticity is also important when it comes to gain the positive attitude of the audience and the success in the long term. The unique talent is crucial for all stars. According to football stars, the authenticity of their personal brands...
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Experience Based Decisional DNA (DDNA) to Support Sustainable Product Design
PublicationThis paper presents the idea of providing engineering design knowledge to designers working on sustainable product design and development process. The new product development process often requires significant amount of design knowledge which can be saved and recalled by designers during the design process. This knowledge is very important for successful sustainable product development as it can include material selection, product...
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Entangled rendezvous: a possible application of Bell non-locality for mobile agents on networks
PublicationRendezvous is an old problem of assuring that two or more parties, initially separated, not knowing the position of each other, and not allowed to communicate, are striving to meet without pre-agreement on the meeting point. This problem has been extensively studied in classical computer science and has vivid importance to modern and future applications. Quantum non-locality, like Bell inequality violation, has shown that in many...
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Service-based Resilience via Shared Protection in Mission-critical Embedded Networks
PublicationMission-critical networks, which for example can be found in autonomous cars and avionics, are complex systems with a multitude of interconnected embedded nodes and various service demands. Their resilience against failures and attacks is a crucial property and has to be already considered in their design phase. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for optimal joint service allocation and routing, leveraging virtualized...
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Fast surrogate-assisted frequency scaling of planar antennas with circular polarisation
PublicationIn this work, the problem of computationally efficient frequency scaling (re-design) of circular polarisation antennas is addressed using surrogate-assisted techniques. The task is challenging and requires the identification of the optimum geometry parameters to enable the operation of the re-designed structure at a selected (required) centre frequency. This involves handling several performance figures such as the antenna gain,...
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A Simple-Topology Compact Broadband Circularly Polarized Antenna With Unidirectional Radiation Pattern
PublicationIn this letter, a geometrically simple, reflector-backed single-point-fed circularly polarized (CP) antenna with unidirectional radiation pattern is presented. The structure comprises a simple coplanar waveguide (CPW) feeding circuit with an open slot etched on one side of the coplanar ground. The enhanced CP bandwidth is obtained by combining the loop mode, the slot mode, and the asymmetrical configuration of the coplanar ground...
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JamesBot - an intelligent agent playing StarCraft II
PublicationThe most popular method for optimizing a certain strategy based on a reward is Reinforcement Learning (RL). Lately, a big challenge for this technique are computer games such as StarCraft II which is a real-time strategy game, created by Blizzard. The main idea of this game is to fight between agents and control objects on the battlefield in order to defeat the enemy. This work concerns creating an autonomous bot using reinforced...
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Simple Measurement Method for Resistive Sensors Based on ADCs of Microcontrollers
PublicationA new, complete measurement method for resistance measurement of resistive sensors for systems based on microcontrollers equipped with analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) is proposed. The interface circuit consists of only four resistors, including a resistive sensor and a reference resistor, connected directly to the microcontroller pins. It is activated only during measurements, which significantly reduces power consumption....
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Social Media in the Fashion Industry. Fundamentals, Strategy and Research Methods
PublicationThis book introduces social network fundamentals in the fashion domain. It addresses the creation of social media marketing plans, highlighting strategic approaches that allow fashion brands to differentiate themselves in the ephemeral and challenging fashion context. Through a variety of academic and professional sources and by sharing the results of their own research, the authors present research methodologies, including netnography,...
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Microgrid Energy Management System
PublicationIn the era of rapid development of "green energy” and storage devices, microgrids implemented in line with the concept of distributed generation can be an effective form of power management. There is a need for an efficient, optimal and reliable control of the combined infrastructure. The article presents a flexible, configurable microgrid's resources control system, which executes the task of meeting the electricity demand of...
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Sea spray as a secondary source of chlorinated persistent organic pollutants? - Conclusions from a comparison of seven fresh snowfall events in 2019 and 2021
PublicationSecondary sources of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) gain in importance worldwide as primary sources decline. In this work, we aim to determine whether sea spray may be a secondary source of chlorinated POPs to the terrestrial Arctic, since a similar mechanism was proposed there only for the more water-soluble POPs. To this end, we have determined polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides concentrations in fresh...
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Canonical switched capacitor converters. Comments, complements, and refinements
PublicationSwitched Capacitor Converters (SCC) form useful blocks in low/medium power applications as they are suitable for integration, both as off-chip and on-chip IC realizations. However, the problem with SCC is that their voltage conversion ratio is topology-dependent. By changing the SC circuit configuration, we can gain control over voltage conversion but the available ratio remains of a discrete nature, i.e. it maps into a countable...
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Portable exhaled breath analyzer employing fluctuation-enhanced gas sensing method in resistive gas sensors
PublicationThis paper presents a portable exhaled breath analyser, developed to detect selected diseases. The set-up employs resistive gas sensors: commercial MEMS sensors and prototype gas sensors made of WO3 gas sensing layers doped with various metal ingredients. The set-up can modulate the gas sensors by applying UV light to induce physical changes of the gas sensing layers. The sensors are placed in a tiny gas chamber of a volume...
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Labeler-hot Detection of EEG Epileptic Transients
PublicationPreventing early progression of epilepsy and sothe severity of seizures requires effective diagnosis. Epileptictransients indicate the ability to develop seizures but humansoverlook such brief events in an electroencephalogram (EEG)what compromises patient treatment. Traditionally, trainingof the EEG event detection algorithms has relied on groundtruth labels, obtained from the consensus...
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Global energy transition: From the main determinants to economic challenges regions
PublicationDynamic global energy transition has been accelerating for the last decade. Interestingly, the energy transition is multidimensional and concerns both the dimensions of technique/ technology and the economic, social, institu-tional, and legal spheres (Shuguang et al., 2022; Tzeremes et al., 2022; Ram-zan et al., 2022; Tzeremes et al., 2022). The literature also points to the signif-icant impact of the digitization of the global...
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The effect of heating and fermenting on antioxidant properties of white cabbage
PublicationIt is widely believed that natural antioxidants found in food are significantly lost during processing. Nevertheless, it was recently demonstrated that processed fruits and vegetables may retain their antioxidant activity. In the present work, the changes in the overall antioxidant properties as a consequence of fermentation of cabbage and/or heat treatment of cabbage juices and extracts were studied. Fermentation processes as...
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Application 2D Descriptors and Artificial Neural Networks for Beta-Glucosidase Inhibitors Screening
PublicationBeta-glucosidase inhibitors play important medical and biological roles. In this study, simple two-variable artificial neural network (ANN) classification models were developed for beta-glucosidase inhibitors screening. All bioassay data were obtained from the ChEMBL database. The classifiers were generated using 2D molecular descriptors and the data miner tool available in the STATISTICA package (STATISTICA Automated Neural...
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Substrate Integrated Waveguide-Based Frequency-Tunable Self-Octaplexing Antenna
PublicationThis communication presents the first-ever substrate integrated waveguide (SIW)-based frequency-tunable self-octaplexing antenna (SOA) for wireless communication. The structure is arranged by implementing eight distinct patches with planar 50-ohm feedlines at the top of the SIW cavity, which realize eight distinct resonant frequencies. Independent tuning of each resonant frequency is achieved by incorporating appropriately allocated...
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Light formed through urban morphology and different organism groups: First findings from a systematic review
PublicationThe prevailing implementation and usage of contemporary lighting technologies and design practices in cities have created over-illuminated built environments. Recent studies indicate that exposure to electric lighting effects formed through spatial characteristics has visual, physiological, and behavioural effects on both humans and non-humans, such as wildlife. In order to gain a better understanding of the impact that electric...
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Technical Engine for Democratization of Modeling, Simulations, and Predictions
PublicationComputational science and engineering play a critical role in advancing both research and daily-life challenges across almost every discipline. As a society, we apply search engines, social media, and se- lected aspects of engineering to improve personal and professional growth. Recently, leveraging such aspects as behavioral model analysis, simulation, big data extraction, and human computation is gain- ing momentum. The nexus...
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A Broadband Circularly Polarized Wide-Slot Antenna with a Miniaturized Footprint
PublicationThis letter presents a novel and simple feeding technique for exciting orthogonal components in a wide-slot antenna. In this technique, a rectangular bracket-shape parasitic strip is placed at the open end of the straight microstrip line to excite the fundamental horizontal and vertical components of the circular polarization (CP). The proposed technique—when employed in conjunction with the asymmetrical geometry of coplanar waveguide...
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Molecular dynamics simulations reveal the balance of forces governing the formation of a guanine tetrad—a common structural unit of G-quadruplex DNA
PublicationG-quadruplexes (G4) are nucleic acid conformations of guanine-rich sequences, in which guanines are arranged in the square-planar G-tetrads, stacked on one another. G4 motifs form in vivo and are implicated in regulation of such processes as gene expression and chromosome maintenance. The structure and stability of various G4 topologies were determined experimentally; however, the driving forces for their formation are not fully...
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Feedline Alterations for Optimization-Based Design of Compact Super-Wideband MIMO Antennas in Parallel Configuration
PublicationThis letter presents a technique for size reduction of wideband multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antennas. Our approach is a two-stage procedure. At the first stage, the antenna structure is modified to improve its impedance matching. This is achieved through incorporation of an n-section tapered feedline, followed by reoptimization of geometry parameters. Reducing the maximum in-band reflection well beyond the acceptance...