Thin‐film transistor mobility limits considerations

The mobility limiting scattering mechanisms for amorphous semiconductors and polar polycrystalline semiconductors are studied in the context of developing new high‐performance thin‐film transistor (TFT) channel layer materials for large‐area electronics. A physics‐based model for carrier transport in an amorphous semiconductor is developed to estimate the mobility limits of amorphous semiconductor TFTs. The model involves band tail state trapping of a diffusive mobility. Simulation reveals a strong dependence on the band tail density of states. This consideration makes it difficult to realize a high‐performance p‐type oxide TFT. A polar crystalline semiconductor may offer a higher mobility but is fundamentally limited by polar optical phonon scattering. Any crystalline TFT channel layer for practical large‐area applications will not be a single crystal but polycrystalline, and therefore, grain size and grain boundary‐dependent scattering will further degrade the transport properties.     

Viscoelastic flow in an obstructed microchannel at high Weissenberg number

Detailed measurements of the flow instability of dilute shear-thinning viscoelastic aqueous solutions, with relatively low zero-shear viscosities, in an obstructed microchannel flow are reported. We examine the flow behaviour resulting from a 100 μm post placed in the channel centreline over a range of Reynolds numbers (\(5<Re<300\)) and Weissenberg numbers (\(20<Wi<10^3\)). Micro-particle image velocimetry measurements show the onset of an upstream instability within a Reynolds number range and at a critical elasticity number corresponding to polymer concentrations above 25 ppm of long-chain polyacrylamide. The instability results in significant local fluctuations in the flow field approaching 30 % of the mean velocity. The magnitude of the local viscosity ratio in the region upstream of the post is proposed as a driving mechanism for the instability which resembles a buckling flow. Additionally, the classical instability owing to separation and vortex formation downstream of the post in Newtonian flow is suppressed and a very long stable wake is observed extending over 10 post-diameters downstream.     

ExoPranayama: a biofeedback-driven actuated environment for supporting yoga breathing practices

Both breathing and internal self-awareness are an integral part of any yoga practice. We describe and discuss the development of ExoPranayama, an actuated environment that physically manifests users’ breathing in yoga. Through a series of trials with yoga practitioners and expert teachers, we explore its role in the practice of yoga. Our interview results reveal that biofeedback through the environment supported teaching and improved self-awareness, but it impacted group cohesion. Two practical uses of the technology emerged for supporting breath control in yoga: (1) biofeedback can provide new information about users’ current internal states; (2) machine-driven feedback provides users with a future state or goal and leads to improved cohesiveness.     

Involving the user Through Library 2.0

Libraries, as we know them today, can be defined by the term Library 1.0. This defines the way resources are kept on shelves or at a computer behind a login. These resources can be taken from a shelf, checked out by the library staff, taken home for a certain length of time and absorbed, and then returned to the library for someone else to avail of. Library 1.0 is a one-directional service that takes people to the information they require. Library 2.0 – or L2 as it is now more commonly addressed as – aims to take the information to the people by bringing the library service to the Internet and getting the users more involved by encouraging feedback participation. This paper presents an overview of Library 2.0 and introduces web 2.0 concepts.     

A regularized graph layout framework for dynamic network visualization

Many real-world networks, including social and information networks, are dynamic structures that evolve over time. Such dynamic networks are typically visualized using a sequence of static graph layouts. In addition to providing a visual representation of the network structure at each time step, the sequence should preserve the mental map between layouts of consecutive time steps to allow a human to interpret the temporal evolution of the network. In this paper, we propose a framework for dynamic network visualization in the on-line setting where only present and past graph snapshots are available to create the present layout. The proposed framework creates regularized graph layouts by augmenting the cost function of a static graph layout algorithm with a grouping penalty, which discourages nodes from deviating too far from other nodes belonging to the same group, and a temporal penalty, which discourages large node movements between consecutive time steps. The penalties increase the stability of the layout sequence, thus preserving the mental map. We introduce two dynamic layout algorithms within the proposed framework, namely dynamic multidimensional scaling and dynamic graph Laplacian layout. We apply these algorithms on several data sets to illustrate the importance of both grouping and temporal regularization for producing interpretable visualizations of dynamic networks.     

Bed morphology, flow structure, and sediment transport at the outlet of Lake Huron and in the upper St. Clair River

An integrated multibeam echo sounder and acoustic Doppler current profiler field survey was conducted in July 2008 to investigate the morphodynamics of the St. Clair River at the outlet of Lake Huron. The principal morphological features of the upper St. Clair River included flow-transverse bedforms that appear weakly mobile, erosive bedforms in cohesive muds, thin non-cohesive veneers of weakly mobile sediment that cover an underlying cohesive (till or glacio-lacustrine) surface, and vegetation that covers the bed. The flow was characterized by acceleration as the banks constrict from Lake Huron into the St. Clair River, an approximately 1500-m long region of flow separation downstream from the Blue Water Bridge, and secondary flow connected to: i) channel curvature; ii) forcing of the flow by local bed topography, and iii) flow wakes in the lee side of ship wrecks. Nearshore, sand-sized, sediment from Lake Huron was capable of being transported into, and principally along, the banks of the upper St. Clair River by the measured flow. A comparison of bathymetric surveys conducted in 2007 and 2008 identifies that the gravel bed does undergo slow downstream movement, but that this movement does not appear to be generated by the mean flow, and could possibly be caused by ship-propeller-induced turbulence. The study results suggest that the measured mean flow and dredging within the channel have not produced major scour of the upper St. Clair River and that the recent fall in the level of Lake Huron is unlikely to have been caused by these mechanisms.     

Collaborative jamming and collaborative defense in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, cognitive nodes operate on a common pool of spectrum where they opportunistically access and use parts of the spectrum not being used by others. Though cooperation among nodes is desirable for efficient network operations and performance, there might be some malicious nodes whose objective could be to hinder communications and disrupt network operations. The absence of a central authority or any policy enforcement mechanism makes these kinds of open-access network more vulnerable and susceptible to attacks.In this paper, we analyze a common form of denial-of-service attack, i.e., collaborative jamming. We consider a network in which a group of jammers tries to jam the channels being used by legitimate users who in turn try to evade the jammed channels. First, we compute the distribution of the jamming signal that a node experiences by considering a random deployment of jammers. Then, we propose different jamming and defending schemes that are employed by the jammers and legitimate users, respectively. In particular, we model and analyze the channel availability when the legitimate users randomly choose available channels and the jammers jam different channels randomly. We propose a multi-tier proxy-based cooperative defense strategy to exploit the temporal and spatial diversity for the legitimate secondary users in an infrastructure-based centralized cognitive radio network. Illustrative results on spectrum availability rates show how to improve resiliency in cognitive radio networks in the presence of jammers.     

EDA: an enhanced dual-active algorithm for location privacy preservation inmobile P2P networks

Various solutions have been proposed to enable mobile users to access location-based services while preserving their location privacy. Some of these solutions are based on a centralized architecture with the participation of a trustworthy third party, whereas some other approaches are based on a mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture. The former approaches suffer from the scalability problem when networks grow large, while the latter have to endure either low anonymization success rates or high communication overheads. To address these issues, this paper deals with an enhanced dual-active spatial cloaking algorithm (EDA) for preserving location privacy in mobile P2P networks. The proposed EDA allows mobile users to collect and actively disseminate their location information to other users. Moreover, to deal with the challenging characteristics of mobile P2P networks, e.g., constrained network resources and user mobility, EDA enables users (1) to perform a negotiation process to minimize the number of duplicate locations to be shared so as to significantly reduce the communication overhead among users, (2) to predict user locations based on the latest available information so as to eliminate the inaccuracy problem introduced by using some out-of-date locations, and (3) to use a latest-record-highest-priority (LRHP) strategy to reduce the probability of broadcasting fewer useful locations. Extensive simulations are conducted for a range of P2P network scenarios to evaluate the performance of EDA in comparison with the existing solutions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EDA can improve the performance in terms of anonymity and service time with minimized communication overhead.