The research presented in this thesis focuses on the structural studies and the high pressure behavior of oxide negative thermal expansion (NTE) materials that can be classified as framework materials. First two chapters were devoted to TaO2F which adopts the ReO3-type cubic structure. Our studies under pressure revealed a rather complicated high pressure behavior for this deceivingly simple compound. The diffraction measurements at variable temperature and high pressure indicated that pressure had a significant effect on the linear coefficient of thermal expansion of TaO2F. In the remainder of the thesis, compounds that belong to the Sc2W3O12 family were examined. High-pressure in-situ powder diffraction studies were conducted on Zr2WO4(PO4)2, Zr2MoO4(PO4)2, Hf2WO4(PO4)2, and Sc2W3O12 in order to investigate the effects of pressure on the coefficients of thermal expansion, existence of phase transitions, phase transition pressures and structural changes occurring upon phase transitions.

Short-distance digital communication links, between chips on a circuit board, or between different circuit boards for example, have traditionally been built by using electrical interconnects - metallic tracks and wires. Recent technological advances have resulted in improvements in the speed of information processing, but have left electrical interconnects intact, thus creating a serious communication problem. Free-space optical interconnects, made up of arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, microlenses, and photodetectors, could be used to solve this problem. If free-space optical interconnects are to successfully replace electrical interconnects, they have to be able to support large rates of information transfer with high channel densities. The biggest obstacle in the way of reaching these requirements is laser beam diffraction. There are three approaches commonly used to model the effects of laser beam diffraction in optical interconnects: one could pursue the path of solving the diffraction integral directly, one could apply stronger approximations with some loss of accuracy of the results, or one could cleverly reinterpret the diffraction problem altogether. None of the representatives of the three categories of existing solutions qualified for our purposes. The main contribution of this dissertation consist of, first, formulating the mode expansion method, and, second, showing that it outperforms all other methods previously used for modelling diffraction in optical interconnects. The mode expansion method allows us to obtain the optical field produced by the diffraction of arbitrary laser beams at empty apertures, phase-shifting optical elements, or any combinations thereof, regardless of the size, shape, position, or any other parameters either of the incident optical field or the observation plane. The mode expansion method enables us to perform all this without any reference or use of the traditional Huygens-Kirchhoff-Fresnel diffraction integrals. When using the mode expansion method, one replaces the incident optical field and the diffracting optical element by an effective beam, possibly containing higher-order transverse modes, so that the ultimate effects of diffraction are equivalently expressed through the complex-valued modal weights. By using the mode expansion method, one represents both the incident and the resultant optical fields in terms of an orthogonal set of functions, and finds the unknown parameters from the condition that the two fields have to be matched at each surface on their propagation paths. Even though essentially a numerical process, the mode expansion method can produce very accurate effective representations of the diffraction fields quickly and efficiently, usually by using no more than about a dozen expanding modes. The second tier of contributions contained in this dissertation is on the subject of the analysis and design of microchannel free-space optical interconnects. In addition to the proper characterisation of the design model, we have formulated several optical interconnect performance parameters, most notably the signal-to-noise ratio, optical carrier-to-noise ratio, and the space-bandwidth product, in a thorough and insightful way that has not been published previously. The proper calculation of those performance parameters, made possible by the mode expansion method, was then performed by using experimentally-measured fields of the incident vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser beams. After illustrating the importance of the proper way of modelling diffraction in optical interconnects, we have shown how to improve the optical interconnect performance by changing either the interconnect optical design, or by careful selection of the design parameter values. We have also suggested a change from the usual 'square' to a novel 'hexagonal' packing of the optical interconnect channels, in order to alleviate the negative diffraction effects. Finally, the optical interconnect tolerance to lateral misalignment, in the presence of multimodal incident laser beams was studied for the first time, and it was shown to be acceptable only as long as most of the incident optical power is emitted in the fundamental Gaussian mode.

Short-distance digital communication links, between chips on a circuit board, or between different circuit boards for example, have traditionally been built by using electrical interconnects -- metallic tracks and wires. Recent technological advances have resulted in improvements in the speed of information processing, but have left electrical interconnects intact, thus creating a serious communication problem. Free-space optical interconnects, made up of arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, microlenses, and photodetectors, could be used to solve this problem. If free-space optical interconnects are to successfully replace electrical interconnects, they have to be able to support large rates of information transfer with high channel densities. The biggest obstacle in the way of reaching these requirements is laser beam diffraction. There are three approaches commonly used to model the effects of laser beam diffraction in optical interconnects: one could pursue the path of solving the diffraction integral directly, one could apply stronger approximations with some loss of accuracy of the results, or one could cleverly reinterpret the diffraction problem altogether. None of the representatives of the three categories of existing solutions qualified for our purposes. The main contribution of this dissertation consist of, first, formulating the mode expansion method, and, second, showing that it outperforms all other methods previously used for modelling diffraction in optical interconnects. The mode expansion method allows us to obtain the optical field produced by the diffraction of arbitrary laser beams at empty apertures, phase-shifting optical elements, or any combinations thereof, regardless of the size, shape, position, or any other parameters either of the incident optical field or the observation plane. The mode expansion method enables us to perform all this without any reference or use of the traditional Huygens-Kirchhoff-Fresnel diffraction integrals. When using the mode expansion method, one replaces the incident optical field and the diffracting optical element by an effective beam, possibly containing higher-order transverse modes, so that the ultimate effects of diffraction are equivalently expressed through the complex-valued modal weights. By using the mode expansion method, one represents both the incident and the resultant optical fields in terms of an orthogonal set of functions, and finds the unknown parameters from the condition that the two fields have to be matched at each surface on their propagation paths. Even though essentially a numerical process, the mode expansion method can produce very accurate effective representations of the diffraction fields quickly and efficiently, usually by using no more than about a dozen expanding modes. The second tier of contributions contained in this dissertation is on the subject of the analysis and design of microchannel free-space optical interconnects. In addition to the proper characterisation of the design model, we have formulated several optical interconnect performance parameters, most notably the signal-to-noise ratio, optical carrier-to-noise ratio, and the space-bandwidth product, in a thorough and insightful way that has not been published previously. The proper calculation of those performance parameters, made possible by the mode expansion method, was then performed by using experimentally-measured fields of the incident vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser beams. After illustrating the importance of the proper way of modelling diffraction in optical interconnects, we have shown how to improve the optical interconnect performance by changing either the interconnect optical design, or by careful selection of the design parameter values. We have also suggested a change from the usual `square' to a novel `hexagonal' packing of the optical interconnect channels, in order to alleviate the negative diffraction effects. Finally, the optical interconnect tolerance to lateral misalignment, in the presence of multimodal incident laser beams was studied for the first time, and it was shown to be acceptable only as long as most of the incident optical power is emitted in the fundamental Gaussian mode.

Short-distance digital communication links, between chips on a circuit board, or between different circuit boards for example, have traditionally been built by using electrical interconnects -- metallic tracks and wires. Recent technological advances have resulted in improvements in the speed of information processing, but have left electrical interconnects intact, thus creating a serious communication problem. Free-space optical interconnects, made up of arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, microlenses, and photodetectors, could be used to solve this problem. If free-space optical interconnects are to successfully replace electrical interconnects, they have to be able to support large rates of information transfer with high channel densities. The biggest obstacle in the way of reaching these requirements is laser beam diffraction. There are three approaches commonly used to model the effects of laser beam diffraction in optical interconnects: one could pursue the path of solving the diffraction integral directly, one could apply stronger approximations with some loss of accuracy of the results, or one could cleverly reinterpret the diffraction problem altogether. None of the representatives of the three categories of existing solutions qualified for our purposes. The main contribution of this dissertation consist of, first, formulating the mode expansion method, and, second, showing that it outperforms all other methods previously used for modelling diffraction in optical interconnects. The mode expansion method allows us to obtain the optical field produced by the diffraction of arbitrary laser beams at empty apertures, phase-shifting optical elements, or any combinations thereof, regardless of the size, shape, position, or any other parameters either of the incident optical field or the observation plane. The mode expansion method enables us to perform all this without any reference or use of the traditional Huygens-Kirchhoff-Fresnel diffraction integrals. When using the mode expansion method, one replaces the incident optical field and the diffracting optical element by an effective beam, possibly containing higher-order transverse modes, so that the ultimate effects of diffraction are equivalently expressed through the complex-valued modal weights. By using the mode expansion method, one represents both the incident and the resultant optical fields in terms of an orthogonal set of functions, and finds the unknown parameters from the condition that the two fields have to be matched at each surface on their propagation paths. Even though essentially a numerical process, the mode expansion method can produce very accurate effective representations of the diffraction fields quickly and efficiently, usually by using no more than about a dozen expanding modes. The second tier of contributions contained in this dissertation is on the subject of the analysis and design of microchannel free-space optical interconnects. In addition to the proper characterisation of the design model, we have formulated several optical interconnect performance parameters, most notably the signal-to-noise ratio, optical carrier-to-noise ratio, and the space-bandwidth product, in a thorough and insightful way that has not been published previously. The proper calculation of those performance parameters, made possible by the mode expansion method, was then performed by using experimentally-measured fields of the incident vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser beams. After illustrating the importance of the proper way of modelling diffraction in optical interconnects, we have shown how to improve the optical interconnect performance by changing either the interconnect optical design, or by careful selection of the design parameter values. We have also suggested a change from the usual `square' to a novel `hexagonal' packing of the optical interconnect channels, in order to alleviate the negative diffraction effects. Finally, the optical interconnect tolerance to lateral misalignment, in the presence of multimodal incident laser beams was studied for the first time, and it was shown to be acceptable only as long as most of the incident optical power is emitted in the fundamental Gaussian mode.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2005 / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 57 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-52).

No description available.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the dentoalveolar effects of rapid maxillary expansion in children with unilateral complete cleft lip and palate in comparison with non-cleft patients. Methods: The experimental group (EG) was composed of 25 patients with unilateral and complete cleft lip and palate (9 males and 15 females) with a mean age of 10.6 years. The control group (CG) comprised of 27 patients without cleft lip and palate (14 males and 13 females) with a mean age of 9.1 years. Dental models of the maxillary dental arch were obtained immediately preexpansion (T1) and 6 months post-expansion (T2) at the time of appliance removal. Digital dental models were obtained using the 3Shape R700 3D laser scanner (3Shape A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark). Transversal widths, arch perimeter, arch length, palatal depth, palatal volume, canine and posterior tooth inclination were digitally measured. Paired t-test was used to perform interphase comparisons and independent t-test to perform intergroup comparisons (p<0.05). Results: In the experimental group, the expansion produced a ignificant increase of all maxillary transverse measurements, palatal volume, arch perimeter and palatal depth while decreased the arch length. RME caused a buccal tip of posterior teeth in patients with UCLP. No differences were observed between experimental and control groups for all the measurements performed except for the intermolar distance (6-6), which showed a greater increase in patients with cleft. Conclusion: Rapid maxillary expansion showed similar dentoalveolar effects in children with UCLP and without oral clefts. / Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the dentoalveolar effects of rapid maxillary expansion in children with unilateral complete cleft lip and palate in comparison with non-cleft patients. Methods: The experimental group (EG) was composed of 25 patients with unilateral and complete cleft lip and palate (9 males and 15 females) with a mean age of 10.6 years. The control group (CG) comprised of 27 patients without cleft lip and palate (14 males and 13 females) with a mean age of 9.1 years. Dental models of the maxillary dental arch were obtained immediately preexpansion (T1) and 6 months post-expansion (T2) at the time of appliance removal. Digital dental models were obtained using the 3Shape R700 3D laser scanner (3Shape A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark). Transversal widths, arch perimeter, arch length, palatal depth, palatal volume, canine and posterior tooth inclination were digitally measured. Paired t-test was used to perform interphase comparisons and independent t-test to perform intergroup comparisons (p<0.05). Results: In the experimental group, the expansion produced a ignificant increase of all maxillary transverse measurements, palatal volume, arch perimeter and palatal depth while decreased the arch length. RME caused a buccal tip of posterior teeth in patients with UCLP. No differences were observed between experimental and control groups for all the measurements performed except for the intermolar distance (6-6), which showed a greater increase in patients with cleft. Conclusion: Rapid maxillary expansion showed similar dentoalveolar effects in children with UCLP and without oral clefts.

Program manipulation is the task to perform transformations on program code, and is normally done in order to optimize the code with respect of the utilization of some computer resource. Partial evaluation is the task when partial computations can be performed in a program before it is actually executed. If a parameter to a procedure is constant a specialized version of that procedure can be generated if the constant is inserted instead of the parameter in the procedure body and as much computations in the code as possible are performed. A system is described which works on programs written in INTERLISP, and which performs partial evaluation together with other transformations such as beta-expansion and certain other optimization operations. The system works on full LISP and not only for a "pure" LISP dialect, and deals with problems occurring there involving side-effects, variable assignments etc. An analysis of a previous system, REDFUN, results in a list of problems, desired extensions and new features. This is used as a basis for a new design, resulting in a new implementation, REDFUN-2. This implementation, design considerations, constraints in the system, remaining problems, and other experience from the development and experiments with the system are reported in this paper.

No description available.

L'ataxie spinocérébelleuse de type 7 (SCA7) est une maladie neurodégénerative due à une expansion de CAG traduit en polyQ dans la protéine ataxine-7. La SUMOylation, modification post-traductionnelle que nous avons identifiée moduler l'agrégation de la protéine mutante, est facilitée par une SUMO E3 ligase.Nous avons identifié RanBP2, une nucléoporine appartenant au complexe du pore nucléaire en tant que SUMO E3 ligase, via SUMO-1 de l'ataxine-7. En effet, le silencing de RanBP2 induit l'agrégation de l'ataxine-7 mutante, ce qui démontre l'implication de RanBP2 dans la physiopathologie de SCA7. Nous montrons également que l'ataxine-7 endogène est une cible modifiée par SUMO-1 et -2. L'ataxine-7 poly-SUMOylée, grâce à la présence de chaines SUMO2/3, est capable de recruter RNF4. Cette protéine conduit à la dégradation de l'ataxine-7 mutante par la voie du protéasome. La dégradation est abolie en présence d'un mutant de RNF4.Dans un modèle murin KI SCA7, nous avons quantifié l'expression des gènes impliqués dans la voie de la SUMOylation au niveau des régions les plus touchées du cerveau. Le niveau d'expression des ARNs messagers montre des altérations dépendantes des répétitions CAG du gène SCA7. A 6 mois (avant le début de la pathologie), les premières dérégulations sont observées; à 12 mois (à un stade avancé de la maladie), on note une diminution statistiquement significative de Sumo-1 dans le cervelet des souris Atxn7100Q/5Q. Ces résultats, alliés à l'observation de l'accumulation anormale des protéines SUMO-1 et RanBP2 dans le cervelet d'un patient SCA7, suggèrent que les voies de la SUMOylation in vivo peuvent être perturbées dans SCA7. / Spinocerebellar ataxia type 7 (SCA7) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by a CAG expansion (polyQ) in the protein ataxin-7. SUMOylation, a post-translational modification that we identified to modulate mutant protein aggregation in a SCA7 cellular model, is facilitated by a SUMO E3 ligase. Here, we identified RanBP2 (Nup358), a nucleoporin belonging to the nuclear pore complex, as the major E3 enzyme implicated in ataxin-7 modification by SUMO-1. Indeed, RanBP2 silencing renders mutant ataxin-7 more prone to aggregation, thus demonstrating the implication of RanBP2 in SCA7 pathophysiology. We also show that endogenous ataxin-7 is a target for both SUMO-1 and -2 modification. Poly-SUMOylated ataxin-7 presents a docking site composed of SUMO2/3 chains for the recruitment of RNF4: this protein is a SUMO E3 ubiquitin ligase that mediates degradation of mutant ataxin-7 by the proteasome pathway. The degradation is abolished in presence of a mutant form of RNF4. In a SCA7 knock-in mouse model we quantified expression of SUMO-pathway related genes in cerebellum and retina, the most affected regions using quantitative RT-PCR. SUMO-related genes show expanded repeat-dependent alterations in expression patterns. At 6 months (before onset), deregulations begin to occur; by 12 months (late stage of disease), there is a statistically significant impairment in Sumo-1 levels in Atxn7100Q/5Q cerebellum. These results, together with the observation that SUMO-1 and RanBP2 protein accumulate abnormally in the cerebellum of a SCA7 patient, suggest that in vivo SUMO-modifying pathways may be perturbed in SCA7.