An analog inner hair cell and auditory nerve circuit using a dual AGC model has been implemented using 0.35 micron mixed-signal technology. A fully-differential current-mode architecture is used and the ability to correct channel mismatch is evaluated with matched layouts as well as with digital current tuning. The Meddis test paradigm is used to examine the analog implementation’s auditory …
The last few years have seen the development and fabrication of nanoscale circuits at high density and low power. Following a single-event upset (SEU), so-called soft errors due to internal and externally induced phenomena (such as α-particles and cosmic rays in adverse environments) have been reported during system operation; this is especially deleterious for storage elements such as flip-f…
This paper reports on the application of the Walsh–Hadamard transform (WHT) for data compression in brain-machine/brain-computer interfaces. Using the proposed technique, the amount of the neural data transmitted off the implant is compressed by a factor of at least 63 at the expense of as low as 4.66% RMS error between the signal reconstructed on the external host and the original neural si…
The future cyber security workforce needs radio frequency identification (RFID) information systems security (INFOSEC) and threat modeling educational materials. A complete RFID security course with new learning materials and teaching strategies is presented here. A new RFID Reference Model is used in the course to organize discussion of RFID, much as the open systems interconnection (OSI) mode…
Conventionally, measurements of temperaturedependent device parameters and degradation are performed using thermo chucks or dedicated test-furnaces. With such an equipment, the available temperature range is limited (typically to a maximum of 300 ◦C) and reliable temperature switches are rather slow, i.e., in the range of minutes to hours. We refine the recently suggested use of polycrystall…
Survival rates and growth parameters of hatchery-reared sea trout (Salmo trutta trutta L.) fry were determined after stocking in the wild. The larvae were hatchery-reared for 12 weeks in two groups: fry were fed either on live zooplankton and live chironomidae larvae (LFG), or fed a pellet diet (PFG). The survival rate and specific growth rates were higher in the LFG than in the PFG group. Mos…
This paper describes and discusses the implementation of a project-based graduate design course in telecommunications engineering. This course, which requires a combination of technical and soft skills for its completion, enables guided independent learning (GIL) and application of technical knowledge acquired from classroom learning. Its main implementation challenge is the need for instructo…
Parentage analysis in aquaculture determines genealogical relationships between broodstock and progeny when the parents are unknown. Thus, parentage analysis is a useful tool to establish pedigree reports in molecular-assisted selection programs. Here, we evaluated 10 heterologous microsatellite markers for parentage assignment in abalone hybrids produced from 43 abalone broodstocks of red abal…
This paper discusses the design and implementation of laboratories and course projects using LabVIEW in an instrumentation course. The pedagogical challenge is to enhance students’ learning of digital communication using LabVIEW. LabVIEW was extensively used in the laboratory sessions, which better prepared students for the course projects. Two course projects were designed to familiarize t…
Computing the degree of redundancy for structured linear systems is proven to be NP-hard. A linear system whose model matrix is of size is considered structured if some row vectors in the model matrix are linearly dependent. Bound-and-decompose and 0-1 mixed integer programming (MIP) are two approaches to compute the degree of redundancy, which were previously proposed and compared in the liter…
This paper examines the problem of determining the distribution of a number of indistinguishable moving bodies located in regions separated by sensor beams that can detect whether a body moves across them. We characterize the conditions under which an exact distribution of bodies can be determined, and compute bounds on the expected number of sensor observations required to determine this exac…
Optimal design is an inevitable step for parallel manipulators. The formulated optimal design problems are generally constrained, nonlinear, multimodal, and even without closed-form analytical expressions. Numerical optimization algorithms are thus applied to solve the problems. However, the optimization algorithms are usually chosen ad arbitrium. This paper aims to provide a guideline to choos…
Today’s electrical and computer engineering graduates need marketable skills to work with electronic devices. Hands-on experiments prepare students to deal with real-world problems and help them to comprehend theoretical concepts and relate these to practical tasks. However, shortage of equipment, high costs, and a lack of human resources for laboratory maintenance and assistance decrease th…
Mobile service providers andmanufacturers continue to provide services and devices that take advantage of the location information associated with devices to provide a more personalized experience for users. For many such services, the user experience can be dramatically improved if a mobile device can predict how long a mobile user will stay at the current location. In this paper, we propose t…
System stability is a basic concept in courses on dynamic system analysis and control for undergraduate students with computer science backgrounds. Typically, this was taught using a simple simulation example of an inverted pendulum. Unfortunately, many difficult issues arise in the learning and understanding of the concepts of stability, instability, and marginal stability. Instead, the author…
Abstract—A 2-D micromachined silicon thermal wind sensor measures wind speed and direction by monitoring temperature differences induced by an airflow that passes along the substrate surface. When ambient temperature changes, however, the temperature drift of the sensor will lead to incorrect output values. By examining the thermophysical properties of the airflow, substrate, and temperature…
1. Biological invaders can provide a highly abundant novel prey, yet the effect this has on the body condition of native predators is unknown. 2. Since invading the Laurentian Great Lakes over two decades ago, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) has become an important food source for many native species. 3. We used long-term data from Lakes Erie and Ontario (19932012) to create quantile…
Abstract—The conversion of electrical to mechanical power on a sub-centimeter scale is a key technology in many microsystems and energy harvesting devices. In this paper, we present a type of a capacitive energy conversion device that uses capillary pressure and electrowetting to reversibly convert electrical power to hydraulic power. These microhydraulic actuators use a high surface-to-volum…
Abstract—We report our work in developing microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based Ultra High Frequency (UHF) AT-cut quartz monolithic crystal filters operating between 350 and 400 MHz for integration with Si electronics for highly compact Radio Frequency (RF) front-end electronics. Our narrow bandwidth (0.2%) high Q filters have measured insertion losses of −2 dB with temperature stabil…
Abstract—This paper reports on a proof-of-concept microelectromechanical system-based Fabry–Perot filter that is capable of electrically tuning within the long-wave infrared thermal imaging band of 8–12 μm. The device employs a single-layer quarter-wavelength thick tensile germanium membrane for the suspended top mirror in order to achieve nanometer-scale as-released mirror flatness acr…
Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) loci encode glycoproteins that bind to foreign peptides and initiate immune responses through their interaction with T cells. MHC class II molecules are heterodimers consisting of a and b chains encoded by extremely variable genes; variation in exon 2 is responsible for the majority of observed polymorphisms, mostly concentrated in the codons specifying th…
1. Desert rivers are highly dynamic systems in which dry periods, frequently involving the cessation of superficial flow, alternate with violent flash floods. In spite of their territorial importance and high functional and biological diversity, desert rivers have received little attention in the scientific literature, especially in Northern Africa. 2. This study investigated the distribution …
The mechanisms most likely to determine the distribution of the two major herring Clupea harengus stocks in their common early summer feeding ground in the eastern North Sea, Skagerrak and Kattegat were investigated through analysis of acoustic survey data from six consecutive years. No change was detected in biomass of North Sea autumn spawning C. harengus (NSAS) over time, whereas the biomass…
The nuclear receptors dax1 and SF-1 play important and antagonistic roles in gonad differentiation in mammals. To study their potential functions in teleost fish, the full-length cDNAs of dax1 and SF-1 were cloned and characterized from spotted scat. Their expression patterns in adult tissues and juveniles treated with 17
A lactic acid bacterial strain, Lactobacillus paracasei subsp. tolerans F2, isolated from the intestine of Ramnogaster arcuata, was evaluated as a growth promoter in juvenile rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum, 1972) farming. In addition, the safety of the strain was assessed according to the FAO recommendations. Strain F2 was susceptible to most antibiotics tested and no evidence of he…
Dietary lipid source in aquaculture has become a central topic in research whilst natural resources availability diminishes. Hence, to weigh up and forecast consumers impressions, the impact of partial (70%) and complete (100%) dietary replacement of fish oil (FO) by linseed oil (LO) on sensory and quality attributes was studied during the edible shelf life of gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata…
Abstract—Ensuring safe operation of stimulators is the most important issue in neural stimulation. Safety, in terms of stimulators’ electrical performances, can be related mainly to two factors; the zero-net charge transfer to tissue and the heat generated by power dissipation at tissue. This paper presents a safety ensuring neurostimulator for retinal vision prostheses, featuring precise …
Using supervised machine learning approaches to recognize human activities from on-body wearable accelerometers generally requires a large amount of labeled data.When ground truth information is not available, too expensive, time consuming or difficult to collect, one has to rely on unsupervised approaches. This paper presents a new unsupervised approach for human activity recognition from raw …
This paper aims at investigating the drop impact solder interconnect reliability of an advanced ultra-fine-pitch 3-D integrated circuit chip stacking packaging in accordance with JEDEC board-level test specification through finite-element (FE) simulation and experimental testing. To characterize the transient dynamic responses of the package, ANSYS/LS-DYNA incorporated with the Input-G method i…
Early detection of patients with elevated risk of developing diabetes mellitus is critical to the improved prevention and overall clinical management of these patients. We aim to apply association rule mining to electronic medical records (EMR) to discover sets of risk factors and their corresponding subpopulations that represent patients at particularly high risk of developing diabetes. Given…
The barrier properties of self-forming barrier aresensitive to the thickness, annealing temperature, annealing time, and impurity concentration of itself. In this paper, the properties of Cu/CuMn/SiO2 bilayer structures were investigated, and an optimized thickness of Cu and CuMn alloy used as barrier layers in these bilayer structures was also determined. The bilayer structure could reduce the…
Ciona intestinalis sp. A (Tunicata, Ascidiacea) is a marine invertebrate with a widespread distribution and high invasive potential, yet little is known about its ecology. Here, the macrodynamics of demographic and reproductive trends were first determined using archive data covering 2002–2012. Species abundance in the central Tyrrhenian Sea (Campania, Italy - NW Mediterranean) displayed Pois…
In this study, a laboratory of genetics and physiology 2 gene (lgp2) from common carp Cyprinus carpio was isolated and characterized. The full-length complementary (c)DNA of lgp2 was 3061 bp and encoded a polypeptide of 680 amino acids, with an estimated molecular mass of 77 341⋅2Da and a predicted isoelectric point of 6⋅53. The predicted protein included four main overlapping structural do…
The objective was to document the variations in the intermuscular bone counts among three carp strains: mirror carp, hybrid carp [Boshi carp (Cyprinus pellegrini) 9 Heilongjiang carp (Cyprinus carpio)], and a cold-resistant strain of Hebao carp. The intermuscular bone counts, lengths, and weights were obtained from 146 fish; the bone count ranged from 55 to 110 (mean 92.85) among the three str…
Most of the studies investigating synchrony in fluctuations of abundance of small pelagic fish have been based on catch data only, which do not describe the dynamics of populations as a relative abundance index. In this paper, catch, biomass, recruitment and recruitment rate, were used to compare synchronous changes for two stocks of anchovy (Engraulis ringens) from 1982 to 2004. One is the No…
1. We compared leaf litter conditioning in two artificial stream channels that were connected to a second-order stream (both in- and outflow). The water in one channel had the same temperature as the stream and in the other channel was warmed (3 °C above ambient stream water temperature). In addition to measuring leaf decomposition by microbes, we ran feeding trials in the artificial streams a…
During scientific surveys on the continental slopes north-west of Spitsbergen and off north-east Greenland (c. 600 and 1000m depths), two female Arctic skates Amblyraja hyperborea were caught while swallowing extraordinary large individuals of glacial eelpout Lycodes frigidus. The total length (LT) of the prey constituted 50 and 80% of the LT of the skates, which reveal that A. hyperborea are c…
Abstract—Fabrication of ultra-thin (1–20-μm thickness) polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) films is enabled with a hexane dilution process and an underlying gelatin release layer. The release and transfer of these films over large areas (>5 cm) allows measurement of the thickness-dependent and process-dependent mechanical properties of ultra-thin PDMS membranes, reported for the first time. The e…
Abstract—A compact, low-power, single-loop third-order delta–sigma () time-to-digital converter (TDC) for time-mode signal processing is presented in this brief. In general, a high-resolution TDC requires a cascadable time integrator to increase the order of the loop filter. However, implementing the time integrator has been very challenging owing to the difficulty in storing time inf…
An analytical approach to predict initiation and growth of interfacial delamination in the through-silicon via structure is developed by combining a cohesive zone model with a shear-lag model. Two critical temperatures are predicted for damage initiation and fracture initiation, respectively. It is found that via extrusion significantly increases beyond the second critical temperature. The depe…
Abstract—Graph-based ranking models have been widely applied in information retrieval area. In this paper, we focus on a well known graph-based model - the Ranking on Data Manifold model, or Manifold Ranking (MR). Particularly, it has been successfully applied to content-based image retrieval, because of its outstanding ability to discover underlying geometrical structure of the given image d…
Recently, the temporal constraint satisfiability is regarded as an important criterion in Web service composition to guarantee its timely completion. This leads to a new challenge in analyzing the compatibility of Web services under temporal constraints. The existing methods either do not consider message mismatches between services in a composition or suffer from state-space explosion by verif…
Improving the efficacy of rapid response operations in acute care delivery to ensure patient safety and care quality is of significant importance. In this paper, we study the response time performance (RTP) in rapid response operations. Such performance is defined as the probability that an appropriate decision responding to patient deterioration can be made within a desired time period. First,…
The paper presents a model for freeway traffic performance evaluation and control in a First-Order Hybrid Petri Net (FOHPN) framework. Such a hybrid Petri net formalism includes continuous places holding fluid, discrete places containing a non-negative integer number of tokens and transitions, which are either discrete or continuous. In order to suitably describe the dynamics of the freeway tra…
We examine a non-cyclic scheduling problem of a wet station that performs cleaning processes for removing residual contaminants on wafer surfaces. Several chemical and rinse baths, and multiple robots for transporting jobs are linearly combined in a wet station. A wet station in a fab tends to have different types of jobs. Therefore, it is realistic to consider non-cyclic release of jobs into a…
In dimensional inspection using coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), the following issues are critical to achieve accurate inspection while minimizing the cost and time: 1) How can we select the sampling positions of the measurements so that we can get as much information from a limited number of samples as possible and 2) given the limited number of measurements, how can we assess the form er…
The purpose of this paper is based on the estimation of power MOSFET junction temperature during a shortduration avalanche mode. Therefore, an experiment has been developed and results have been correlated with simple electrothermal modeling. The simple electrothermal model allows monitoring of junction temperature by simple measurements of the ID(t) andBVdss(t) waveforms. Accurate extraction …
Disassembly planning is aimed to perform the optimal disassembly sequence given a used or obsolete product in terms of cost and environmental impact. However, the actual disassembly process of products can experience great uncertainty due to a variety of unpredictable factors. To deal with such uncertainty, this work presents some chance constrained programming models for disassembly cost from …
This paper analyzes the motion planning of a custom-built all position autonomous mobile welding robot. It proposes a novel motion planning method that allows the robot to complete fillet seamwelding while the vehicle turns around the right angle seam simultaneously. The global optimal solution is obtained through model modification. Note to Practitioners—This paper ismotivated by the proble…
The use of passive ultra high-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) integrated into plywood boards is proposed to enable the identification and tracking of individual plywood boards and end products of plywood. For the first time, tags are embeddable inside plywood by direct inkjet-printing tag antennas on pure birch veneer. The use of passive UHFRFIDtechnology in the applicat…