Cepaea’ vindobonensis has been shown to be closely related to Caucasotachea in recent molecular studies. The phylogenetic relationships within this clade and especially the phylogenetic position of ‘Cepaea’ vindobonensis were, however, not well resolved. Our phylogenetic analyses on the basis of an increased number of molecular genetic loci from the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes unamb…
Establishing phylogenetic relationships of miniature fishes is challenging in taxa with developmental truncation. Within the Characiformes, developmental truncation appears to be relatively rare, with the Neotropical genus Priocharax being an example. Priocharax includes three miniature species among the smallest of the order and has been hypothesized to belong to the Heterocharacinae. The p…
In numerous cellular applications, cells are transported to specific positions or extracted from complex cell solutions. Therefore, an efficient cell transportation path planner for these applications is important for avoiding collisions with other cells or obstacles. In this paper, a path planning approach to transporting cells using a robot-aided optical manipulation system is presented. Opt…
A novel parameters estimation strategy of interior permanent magnet synchronous machine (IPMSM) for accurate torque control is proposed and investigated in this paper. The difference of q-axis inductance and d-axis inductance is estimated by a PI regulator using the deviation between actual output power and reference power. The estimated difference of dq inductance can be used to achieve maxim…
Abstract—Pathway deregulation has been identified as a key driver of carcinogenesis, with proteins in signaling pathways serving as primary targets for drug development. Deregulation can be driven by a number of molecular events, including gene mutation, epigenetic changes in gene promoters, verexpression, and gene amplifications or deletions. We demonstrate a novel approach that identifies p…
This paper presents a novel real-time powerdevice temperature estimation method that monitors the power MOSFET’s junction temperature shift arising from thermal aging effects and incorporates the updated electrothermal models of power modules into digital controllers. Currently, the real-time estimator is emerging as an important tool for active control of device junction temperature as well…
Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are powerful tools for multiple sequence alignment (MSA), which is known to be an NPcomplete and important problem in bioinformatics. Learning HMMs is a difficult task, and many meta-heuristic methods, including particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been used for that. In this paper, a new variant of PSO, called the random drift particle swarm optimization (RDPSO) …
Correlation factors between different ESD pulse types for different back-end-of-line (BEOL) metal-line topologies have been studied to support system-level on-chip ESD design. The component level (HMM, HBM, and TLP on a wafer) and system-level (IEC gun contact on package) ESD stresses were correlated followed by extraction of correlation factors between the IEC/HMM and TLP, as well as the HBM a…
Variability in resistive switching memory (RRAM) devices is studied by applying an AC measurement setup capable of efficiently collecting read current data in low and high resistance states (LRS and HRS, respectively) in each consecutive pulse SET/RESET cycle. It is found that HRS and LRS read current values follow the lognormal and normal distributions, respectively. Endurance test demonstrat…
The subject of this paper is high-speed induction motor (IM) with drag-cup rotor with low inertia, designed for use in high-speed automotive applications such as kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). The aim of this paper is to present the optimization procedure of the air-gap length and the rotor thickness of this kind of motor in order to achieve the highest efficiency in the speed and torqu…
In this paper, we assess the performance of a ring oscillator and a DRAM cell when they are implemented with different technologies (planar CMOS, FinFETs, and III–V MOSFETs), and subjected to different reliability scenarios (variability and soft errors). FinFET-based circuits show the highest robustness against variability and soft error environments. Index Terms—DRAM, integrated circuit r…
This paper proposes a robust adaptive voltage control of three-phase voltage source inverter for a distributed generation system in a standalone operation. First, the state-space model of the load-side inverter, which considers the uncertainties of system parameters, is established. The proposed adaptive voltage control technique combines an adaption control term and a state feedback control te…
The effect of conductor spacing and applied voltage on the insulation performance of printed circuit board (PCB) has been investigated under temperature–humidity–bias (THB) conditions in this paper. Based on the electrochemical migration failure mechanism, this paper proposes an accelerated statistical model, which includes a life–stress relationship model and a life distribution model. …
A liquid-cooled eddy current retarder (ECR) with a dual salient poles design is proposed in this paper. Finite element models were developed to perform transient magnetic analysis and steady-state conjugate heat transfer analysis. The braking torque, eddy current field and thermal field of the retarder were each predicted. The retarder was subjected to two sets of tests on a test bench, to obta…
This paper presents a new computational technique for the identification of HIV haplotypes. HIV tends to generate many potentially drug-resistant mutants within the HIV-infected patient and being able to identify these different mutants is important for efficient drug administration. With the view of identifying the mutants, we aim at analyzing short deep sequencing data called reads. From a s…
Abstract—MicroRNA (miRNA) plays an important role as a regulator in biological processes. Identification of (pre-) miRNAs helps in understanding regulatory processes. Machine learning methods have been designed for pre-miRNA identification. However, most of them cannot provide reliable predictive performances on independent testing data sets. We assumed this is because the training sets, espe…
This paper proposes an integrated event-based binaural silicon cochlea system aimed at efficient spatial audition and auditory scene analysis. The cochlea chip has a matched pair of digitally-calibrated 64-stage cascaded analog second-order filter banks with 512 pulse-frequency modulated (PFM) address-event representation (AER) outputs. The quality factors (Qs) of channels are individually adj…
Modern manufacturing facilities waste many energy savings opportunities (ESO) due to the lack of integration between the facility and the production system. To explore the energy savings opportunities, this paper combines the two largest energy consumers in a manufacturing plant: the production line and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The concept of the energy oppo…
New requirements for the validation of simulation models based on measurements in many grid codes show that existing generic approaches for generator and converter models of doubly fed generator systems (DFG) may not be accurate enough. The authors show that by applying a detailed analysis of the generator equations and the converter control design, a reduction of the model complexity is possi…
This work presents a novel feature extraction approach called nonuniform scale-frequency map for environmental sound classification in home automation. For each audio frame, important atoms from the Gabor dictionary are selected by using the Matching Pursuit algorithm. After the system disregards phase and position information, the scale and frequency of the atoms are extracted to construct a s…
In this paper, a 3-D finite-element (FE) model was established based on real test samples. Coupled electrothermal and thermal–mechanical FE analyses were conducted to analyze the mechanical behavior of bonding wire under cyclic power loading. The current crowding phenomenon may be improved by increasing the wire number. The junction temperature can be decreased by decreasing the joule heat f…
The nymphal stages of Palaeozoic insects differ significantly in morphology from those of their modern counterparts. Morphological details for some previously reported species have recently been called into question. Palaeozoic insect nymphs are important, however – their study could provide key insights into the evolution of wings, and complete metamorphosis. Here we review past work on t…
In this paper, a noncontact proximity vital sign sensor, using a phase locked loop (PLL) incorporated with voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) built-in planar type circular resonator, is proposed to enhance sensitivity in severe environments. The planar type circular resonator acts as a series feedback element of the VCO as well as a near-field receiving antenna. The frequency deviation of the …
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a cell-surface protein mediating immune recognition, plays important roles in the immune response system of all higher vertebrates. MHC molecules are highly polymorphic and they are grouped into serotypes according to the specificity of the response. It is a common belief that a protein sequence determines its three dimensional structure and function.…
Automated protein function prediction is one of the grand challenges in computational biology. Multi-label learning is widely used to predict functions of proteins. Most of multi-label learning methods make prediction for unlabeled proteins under the assumption that the labeled proteins are completely annotated, i.e., without any missing functions. However, in practice, we may have a subset of …
Public cloud platforms might start with homogeneous hardware; nevertheless, because of inevitable hardware upgrades, or adding more capacity, the initial homogeneous platform will gradually evolve into heterogeneous as time passes by. The consequent performance heterogeneity is of concern to cloud users. In this paper, we evaluate performance variations from hardware heterogeneity and schedulin…
Array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) is a newly introduced method for the detection of copy number abnormalities associated with human diseases with special focus on cancer. Specific patterns in DNA copy number variations (CNVs) can be associated with certain disease types and can facilitate prognosis and progress monitoring of the disease. Machine learning techniques have been used t…
Siderastrea siderea is one of the most abundant corals at high latitude shallow sites along the Florida Reef Tract (25°–27°N). This species is able to tolerate wide seawater temperature fluctuations and sedimentation stress, but its reproductive status at high latitudes and under marginal environmental conditions is poorly understood. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the reprod…
To meet the electrical performance requirements, copper traces with ultralow-k (ULK) interlayer dielectric (ILD) materials are used in today’s semiconductor devices. The dielectric constant (k) of these materials is often reduced through the introduction of pores or inclusions, and thus, the ULK ILD materials have low fracture strength. During flip-chip assembly, thermally induced stresses oc…
This paper investigates the problem of robust model predictive control (RMPC) with saturations and packet dropouts. In this model, polytopic uncertainties are adopted to describe the inconsistency arising from the discretization process of sampling, while the occurrence probabilities of packet dropouts are time-varying and saturations are taken into account to describe input and output signals.…
Freshwater fauna are particularly sensitive to environmental change and disturbance. Management agencies frequently use fish and amphibian biodiversity as indicators of ecosystem health and a way to prioritize and assess management strategies. Traditional aquatic bioassessment that relies on capture of organisms via nets, traps and electrofishing gear typically has low detection probabilitie…
Abstract—Genetic recombination is an essential event during the process of meiosis resulting in an exchange of segments between paired chromosomes. Estimating recombination rate is crucial for understanding the process of recombination. Experimental methods are normally difficult and limited to small scale estimations. Thus statistical methods using population genetics data are important for …
Proline cis-trans isomerization (CTI) plays a key role in the rate-determining steps of protein folding. Accurate prediction of proline CTI is of great importance for the understanding of protein folding, splicing, cell signaling, and transmembrane active transport in both the human body and animals. Our goal is to develop a state-of-the-art proline CTI predictor based on a biophysically motiva…
Accurate identification of cis-regulatory elements and their correlated modules is essential for analysis of transcriptional regulation, which is a challenging problem in computational biology. Unsupervised learning has the advantage of compensating for missing annotated data, and is thus promising to be effective to identify cis-regulatory elements and modules. We introduced a Conditional Rand…
The use of the human pulse signal for medical diagnosis is a mainstay in the practice of traditional Chinese medicine. Computer processing of this signal may be used to automate diagnostic procedures and to reveal sources of information in the waveform that have been used by both eastern and western physicians for more than two millennia. A new method for preprocessing of the human pulse signa…
Cancer forms a robust system capable of maintaining stable functioning (cell sustenance and proliferation) despite perturbations. Cancer progresses as stages over time typically with increasing aggressiveness and worsening prognosis. Characterizing these stages and identifying the genes driving transitions between them is critical to understand cancer progression and to develop effective anti-…
In this paper, we symbolically represent timed discrete-event systems (TDES), which can be used to efficiently compute the supervisor in the supervisory control theory context. We model a TDES based on timed extended finite automata (TEFAs): an augmentation of extended finite automata (EFAs) by incorporating discrete time into the model. EFAs are ordinary automata extended with discrete variabl…
In this paper, a pulse circuit was designed to simulate the source of an electrostatic discharge (ESD). This high-voltage source was successfully used in ESD tests to precisely control the voltage exerted on the liquid crystal (LC) cells. In addition, the characteristics of the samples under ESD were measured by a more precise pulse source. According to the measurement of the relaxation of the …
Novice learners are typically unfamiliar with abstract engineering symbols. They are also often unaccustomed to instructional materials consisting of a combination of text, diagrams, and equations. This raises the question of whether instruction on elementary electrical circuit analysis for novice learners should employ contextualized representations of the circuits with familiar components, su…
In this paper we present GAMYGDALA, an emotional appraisal engine that enables game developers to easily add emotions to their Non-Player Characters (NPC). Our approach proposes a solution that is positioned between event coding of affect,where individual events have predetermined annotated emotional consequences for NPCs, and a full blown cognitive appraisal model. Instead, for an NPC that nee…
In this paper, the problems of state estimation are investigated for switched linear systems with average dwell time (ADT) switching in both continuous-time and discrete-time contexts. First, a set of mode-dependent Luenberger-type observers is designed subject to the ADT switching that is synchronous with the switching of the estimated systems. Then, a more practical case of the delayed observ…
Hands-on experiments are essential for computer network security education. Existing laboratory solutions usually require significant effort to build, configure, and maintain and often do not support reconfigurability, flexibility, and scalability. This paper presents a cloud-based virtual laboratory education platform called V-Lab that provides a contained experimental environment for hands-on…
This paper deals with the reliability of a 1.0-μm CMOS-silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process, which is intended for use at 250 ◦C. The goal is to give an overview of the most important reliability aspects that concern devices and circuits at temperatures of 250 ◦C and above. The investigated reliability aspects are the gate oxide integrity in terms of time-dependent dielectric breakdown meas…
Channel hot-carrier (CHC) reliability in p-FinFET devices is studied related to the postdeposition anneal (PDA) process. Clearly reduced CHC degradation is observed with N2-PDA at the VG = VD stress condition. The interface defect density degradation calculated from the subthreshold slope is similar in the reference and PDA devices. However, the pre-existing high-k bulk defect is lower in the P…
A process for the design and manufacture of 3D tactile textures with predefined affective properties was developed. Twenty four tactile textures were manufactured. Texture measures from the domain of machine vision were used to characterize the digital representations of the tactile textures. To obtain affective ratings, the textures were touched, unseen, by 107 participants who scored them aga…
The enormity of the breadth and depth of specimens held within the world’s biological collections offers unparalleled opportunities to capture genomic data from across the entire range of known biological diversity. Such a task would take many lifetimes to complete if we could rely only on fresh samples. High-throughput sequencing provides a technical solution to the long-term problems of …
The erratic bits (EB) phenomenon in nonvolatile memory devices (NVMs) has been evidenced in several technologies as a main reliability detractor. Usually, this issue is handled by repair strategies, which spans from static redundancy to dynamic correction codes. This evidences a tradeoff in a reliability/ performance domain that is due to the limitation in the repair resources amount and corre…
Cloud computing enables resource-constrained clients to economically outsource their huge computation workloads to a cloud server with massive computational power. This promising computing paradigm inevitably brings in new security concerns and challenges, such as input/output privacy and result verifiability. Since matrix inversion computation (MIC) is a quite common scientific and engineering…
We present cloud capacity manager (CCM)—a prototype system, and its methods for dynamically multiplexing the compute capacity of virtualized data centers at scales of thousands of machines, for diverse workloads with variable demands. Extending prior studies primarily concerned with accurate capacity allocation and ensuring acceptable application performance, CCM also sheds light on the trade…
Despite the increasing importance of robotics, there is a significant challenge involved in teaching this to undergraduate students in biomedical engineering (BME) and other related disciplines in which robotics techniques could be readily applied. This paper addresses this challenge through the development and pilot testing of a bio-microrobotics case study that can be integrated into curricu…