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A method for determining whether a transmission signal comprising a cyclic prefix is present in a received signal is described which includes determining a plurality of received signal values from the received signal; forming a plurality of different pairs of the received signal values based on a predefined periodicity of the cyclic prefix; determining a correlation term value for each of the plurality of pairs of the received signal values; and determining whether a data signal is present in the received signal based on a combination of the correlation term values.

A flexure for an electromagnetic nano-positioning linear actuator having a support and an actuating body, the flexure comprising: a first resilient end for attaching to the support; a second resilient end for attaching to the actuating body; and a substantially rigid intermediate portion located between the first resilient end and the second resilient end.

A method of identifying an object having identification information, said identification information being used to verify the object's identity, said method comprising: determining at least one characteristic of a magnetic field of at least a portion of a tag, thereby obtaining a first specific magnetic signal, wherein the tag comprises a substantially non-magnetic host material having pores, wherein at least some of the pores contain a magnetic material, and storing signal information relating to said first specific magnetic signal, said stored signal information forming the identification information of the object.

There is provided a method of conjugating a polymer containing a free aldehyde group with a flavonoid in the presence of an acid catalyst, such that the polymer is conjugated to the C6 or C8 position of the flavonoid A ring. The resulting conjugates may be used to form delivery vehicles to deliver high doses of flavonoids, and may also be used as delivery vehicles to deliver an additional bioactive agent.

Volumes of interest may be defined, within a three-dimensional brain image, for each of three orthogonal directions. Measures, which may, for example, be energy or entropy measures, are determined for slices of the volumes of interest in the three directions. The volume of interest corresponding to the sagittal direction is then identified. The slice, among the slices in the volume of interest corresponding to the identified sagittal direction, having the optical measure is used to define a first estimate of the mid-sagittal plane. The first estimate of the mid-sagittal plane may then be used to build an input to an optimization technique, which operates until a convergence criterion is satisfied, at which point a final estimate of the mid-sagittal plane may be produced.

A method for manufacturing a semiconductor arrangement is disclosed. The method comprises forming at least one trench in a dielectric layer, thereby exposing a portion of a semiconductor substrate, forming a silicon-germanium buffer layer at least on the bottom of the at least one trench, forming a germanium seed layer on the silicon-germanium buffer layer and forming a germanium layer on the germanium seed layer. A semiconductor arrangement is also disclosed. The semiconductor arrangement comprises a semiconductor substrate, a dielectric layer disposed above the semiconductor substrate, at least one trench in the dielectric layer exposing a portion of the semiconductor substrate, a silicon-germanium buffer layer disposed above at least the bottom of the at least one trench, a germanium seed layer disposed above the silicon-germanium buffer layer and a germanium layer disposed above the germanium seed layer.

A method for fabricating an array of semiconductor devices comprising the steps of providing a non-metallic substrate, placing a layer of spheres on said substrate, reducing diameter of the spheres, encapsulating the spheres in a matrix of rigid material, finishing an upper surface of said matrix to expose a portion of said spheres, removing the spheres to form an array of cavities within said matrix, and forming features in said cavities in contact with said substrate so as to form the device.

A method for determining asymmetry in an image such as an MR image of a brain comprises determining a symmetry plane to divide the image into a first part and a second part representative of, for example, the hemispheres of the brain. The probability distributions of voxels against intensities are determined for the first and second parts and histograms of intensities representative of the parts are generated. Compensation is made for any relative shift along a predetermined axis between the histograms. A divergence value based on a distance between the first and second histograms is then calculated and it is determined if the calculated divergence value is greater than a predetermined threshold. A divergence of greater than the predetermined threshold is indicative of asymmetry in the image that may be considered as suspicious for abnormality. There is also disclosed an apparatus for determining asymmetry in an image.

A method of forming, in or on a Si substrate, planar micro-coils with coil windings of high aspect ratio (>3) and a wide variety of geometric shapes. The micro-coils may be formed on a Si substrate and be embedded in a dielectric, or they may be formed in trenches within a Si substrate. The micro-coils may have field enhancing ferromagnetic pillars rising above the micro-coil plane, formed at positions of maximum magnetic field strength and the micro-coils may also include magnetic layers formed beneath the substrate and contacting the pillars to form a substantially closed pathway for the magnetic flux. The substrate may be thinned to membrane proportions. These micro-coils produce strong magnetic fields with strong field gradients and can be used in a wide variety of processes that involve the exertion of strong magnetic forces at small distances or the creation of magnetic wells for trapping and manipulating small particles.

An encoder for encoding a first digital signal representative for a first channel and a second digital signal representative for a second channel is described. The encoder comprises cascaded intra-channel prediction elements for compressing the first digital signal and the second digital signal based on intra-channel correlation and an inter-channel prediction element for compressing the first digital signal and the second digital signal based on inter-channel correlation.