Furan–thiophene copolymers: Electrosynthesis and electrochemical behavior

The electrochemical copolymerization of furan and thiophene was performed at a constant electrode potential in a binary solvent system consisting of boron trifluoride/ethyl ether and an additional amount of ethyl ether (molar ratio = 1 : 2). The obtained homopolymers and copolymers were characterized with cyclic voltammetry and infrared spectroscopy. The influence of the applied electropolymerization potential and the monomer feed ratio of furan and thiophene on the copolymers was investigated. The furan–thiophene copolymers showed good stability of the redox activity in an acetonitrile‐based electrolyte solution. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2008     

Smart home security: challenges,issues and solutions at different IoT layers

The Journal of Supercomputing - The Internet of Things is a rapidly evolving technology in which interconnected computing devices and sensors share data over the network to decipher different...     

Enhancing power transfer capability through flexible AC transmission system devices:a review

Global demand for power has significantly increased, but power generation and transmission capacities have not increased proportionally with this demand. As a result, power consumers suffer from variou...     

PDQ: Parallel Distance Queries for deformable meshes

This paper presents a new algorithm to efficiently maintain Bounding-Volume Hierarchies (BVHs) for fast distance queries with deformable polygon meshes using multi-core architectures. The method involves inflating the bounding volumes in an efficient manner to guarantee the enclosure of the deformable model within the BVH at all times. This is done at low additional computation and memory cost without significantly degrading the quality of the BVH and also in a fashion that allows a simple parallel implementation. Additionally, to facilitate fast queries specifically for deforming meshes, we propose a novel algorithm for the bottom-up construction of BVHs that results in much faster distance queries.     

Home Automation Using Augmented Reality (HAAR)

Wireless Personal Communications - The development of Smart Home Controllers has seen rapid growth in recent years, especially for smart devices, that can utilize the Internet of Things (IoT)....     

Artificial intelligence in cyber security: research advances,challenges, and opportunities

Artificial Intelligence Review - In recent times, there have been attempts to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in a broad range of cyber security applications. Therefore, this paper...     

Improving cache locking performance of modern embedded systems via the addition of a miss table at the L2 cache level

To confer the robustness and high quality of service, modern computing architectures running real-time applications should provide high system performance and high timing predictability. Cache memory is used to improve performance by bridging the speed gap between the main memory and CPU. However, the cache introduces timing unpredictability creating serious challenges for real-time applications. Herein, we introduce a miss table (MT) based cache locking scheme at level-2 (L2) cache to further improve the timing predictability and system performance/power ratio. The MT holds information of block addresses related to the application being processed which cause most cache misses if not locked. Information in MT is used for efficient selection of the blocks to be locked and victim blocks to be replaced. This MT based approach improves timing predictability by locking important blocks with the highest number of misses inside the cache for the entire execution time. In addition, this technique decreases the average delay per task and total power consumption by reducing cache misses and avoiding unnecessary data transfers. This MT based solution is effective for both uniprocessors and multicores. We evaluate the proposed MT-based cache locking scheme by simulating an 8-core processor with 2 levels of caches using MPEG4 decoding, H.264/AVC decoding, FFT, and MI workloads. Experimental results show that in addition to improving the predictability, a reduction of 21% in mean delay per task and a reduction of 18% in total power consumption are achieved for MPEG4 (and H.264/AVC) by using MT and locking 25% of the L2. The MT results in about 5% delay and power reductions on these video applications, possibly more on applications with worse cache behavior. For the FFT and MI (and other) applications whose code fits inside the level-1 instruction (I1) cache, the mean delay per task increases only by 3% and total power consumption increases by 2% due to the addition of the MT.     

Performance evaluation for DRED discrete-time queueing network analytical model

Due to the rapid development in computer networks, congestion becomes a critical issue. Congestion usually occurs when the connection demands on network resources, i.e. buffer spaces, exceed the available ones. We propose in this paper a new discrete-time queueing network analytical model based on dynamic random early drop (DRED) algorithm to control the congestion in early stages. We apply our analytical model on two-queue nodes queueing network. Furthermore, we compare between the proposed analytical model and three known active queue management (AQM) algorithms, including DRED, random early detection (RED) and adaptive RED, in order to figure out which of them offers better quality of service (QoS). We also experimentally compare the queue nodes of the proposed analytical model and the three AQM methods in terms of different performance measures, including, average queue length, average queueing delay, throughput, packet loss probability, etc., aiming to determine the queue node that offers better performance.     

Evolution of 3D mobile games development

3D computer graphics have been an important feature in games development since it was first introduced in the early 80s and there is no doubt that 3D based content is often viewed as more attractive in games than the more abstract 2D graphics. Many games publishers are keen to leverage their success in the console market into the mobile phone platform. However, the resource constraints of mobile phones and the fragmented nature of the environment present considerable challenges for games developers. In this paper we consider some of the current constraints together with current and, probable, future developments both in the software and hardware of mobile phones. As part of this process we benchmark some of the latest and most prevalent software and hardware devices to ascertain both the quality of the graphics produced and the effects upon battery life. Whilst our test results highlight that the current market does indeed present challenges, our research into the future developments highlights the fact we are approaching greater standardization, which will be an important factor for the successful development of 3D mobile games.

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