Engineering in the biological substrate: information processing in genetic circuits

We review the rapidly evolving efforts to analyze, model, simulate, and engineer genetic and biochemical information processing systems within living cells. We begin by showing that the fundamental elements of information processing in electronic and genetic systems are strikingly similar, and follow this theme through a review of efforts to create synthetic genetic circuits. In particular, we describe and review the "silicon mimetic" approach, where genetic circuits are engineered to mimic the functionality of semiconductor devices such as logic gates, latched circuits, and oscillators. This is followed with a review of the analysis, modeling, and simulation of natural and synthetic genetic circuits, which often proceed in a manner similar to that used for electronic systems. We conclude by presenting examples of naturally occurring genetic and biochemical systems that recently have been conceptualized in terms familiar to systems engineers. Our review of these newly forming fields of research demonstrates that the expertise and skills contained within electrical and computer engineering disciplines apply not only to design within biological systems, but also to the development of a deeper understanding of biological functionality. This review of these efforts points to the emergence of both engineering and basic science disciplines following parallel paths.     

Electronic marking and identification techniques to discouragedocument copying

Modern computer networks make it possible to distribute documents quickly and economically by electronic means rather than by conventional paper means. However, the widespread adoption of electronic distribution of copyrighted material is currently impeded by the ease of unauthorized copying and dissemination. In this paper we propose techniques that discourage unauthorized distribution by embedding each document with a unique codeword. Our encoding techniques are indiscernible by readers, yet enable us to identify the sanctioned recipient of a document by examination of a recovered document. We propose three coding methods, describe one in detail, and present experimental results showing that our identification techniques are highly reliable, even after documents have been photocopied     

Electrical engineering's identity crisis - when does a vast and vital profession become unrecognizably diffuse?

More than a century ago, electrical engineering was so much simpler. As electrical engineering begins to blend with various subject areas such as biology, quantum physics and materials science to establish entirely new disciplines and branches of electronics, there are concerns that the EE profession may become "diffused". This paper provides a perspective on the essence of what it means to be an electrical engineer in today's rapidly evolving world.     

Making greed work in networks: a game-theoretic analysis of switchservice disciplines

This paper discusses congestion control from a game-theoretic perspective. There are two basic premises: 1) Users are assumed to be independent and selfish. 2) Central administrative control is exercised only at the network switches. The operating points resulting from selfish user behavior depend crucially on the service disciplines implemented in network switches. This effect is investigated in a simple model consisting of a single exponential server shared by many Poisson sources. We discuss the extent to which one can guarantee, through the choice of switch service disciplines, that these selfish operating points will be efficient and fair. We also discuss to what extent the choice of switch service disciplines can ensure that these selfish operating points are unique and are easily and rapidly accessible by simple self optimization techniques. We show that no service discipline can guarantee optimal efficiency. As for the other properties, we show that the traditional FIFO service discipline guarantees none of these properties, but that a service discipline called fair share guarantees all of them. While the treatment utilizes game-theoretic concepts, no previous knowledge of game theory is assumed     

Insertion loss concepts

The term "insertion loss" has become such a popular one and is applied to so many different concepts that it is becoming unsuitable for precise use. Certain other concepts connected with insertion loss such as attenuation and mismatch loss, are in need of clarification. A logical set of definitions and equations are presented as a suggested approach to more precise terminology. The effect of complex characteristic impedance on these equations is given in an Appendix. Specific suggestions are given for changes in the usage of terms, which if acceptable and adopted would improve the situation.     

Towards a Standardized Terminology for Network Performance

The integration of the products of diverse fields, including the human component, into complex systems has created major difficulties in the development of efficient mechanisms for analyzing system performance. One of the problems can be traced to the variety of terminologies used in describing performance across different fields. A designer or user is faced with vague terms that may be complementary, synonymous, or some combination thereof. There is a need to develop a common understanding of the meaning of widely used terms without reference to a specific discipline. The work described in this paper aims to develop a framework that helps identify a set of performance indicators for complex systems, such as information infrastructures. The objective is not to propose yet another concept, but rather to identify from the existing concepts the proper definitions, attributes, intersections, and evaluation measures. Dependability, fault-tolerance, reliability/availability, security, and survivability are used as representative examples for describing the proposed framework. This framework could eventually help furnish the basis towards adoption of standard terminology.     

Software engineering education

In a field as rapidly growing as software engineering, the education problem splits into two major parts-university education and industrial education. (Some of which is given at university locations, as short courses, but considered industrial education here.) Both parts draw on the same underlying disciplines and methodologies. But the people involved-both teachers and students-have different objectives and characteristics. At the university level students are young, inexperienced, and relatively homogeneous in background and abilities. At the industrial level, students are older, more experienced, and vary considerably in background and abilities. In this paper, we discuss the underlying commonalities and the overlaid differences of university and industrial education in software engineering. The commonalities in discipline and methodologies involve the study and understanding of the Software Process, as discussed in Section II of this special issue, and of the "Tools" and "Know How" discussed in Section III. The differences are due to the characteristics and objectives of students, and show up on curricula content and structure and in course definition.     

可穿戴计算技术及其应用的新发展

可穿戴计算技术是伴随着计算机、微电子和通信技术发展起来的新兴学科,随着科技的进步和人们生活水平的提高这项技术的应用研究也正处于难得的机遇期。阐述了可穿戴计算区别于传统计算的优越特性及其在医疗、军事、教育、助残、体育、娱乐行业、老年人生活辅助方面的重要学术和应用价值,以及可穿戴计算对新一代信息与计算科学技术的巨大推动作用。介绍了可穿戴计算技术的产业化发展情况,说明现代科学技术发展和实际应用的迫切需求使得该领域的科学技术发展迅猛,也使得可穿戴计算技术的发展呈现出研究上的多学科交叉融合与产业化的同步跟进相互促进的新特点。     

On the limits of steganography

In this paper, we clarify what steganography is and what it can do. We contrast it with the related disciplines of cryptography and traffic security, present a unified terminology agreed at the first international workshop on the subject, and outline a number of approaches-many of them developed to hide encrypted copyright marks or serial numbers in digital audio or video. We then present a number of attacks, some new, on such information hiding schemes. This leads to a discussion of the formidable obstacles that lie in the way of a general theory of information hiding systems (in the sense that Shannon gave us a general theory of secrecy systems). However, theoretical considerations lead to ideas of practical value, such as the use of parity checks to amplify covertness and provide public key steganography. Finally, we show that public key information hiding systems exist, and are not necessarily constrained to the case where the warden is passive     

Opt-out,abstain, unplug. A systematic review of the voluntary digital disconnection literature

Temporary and permanent disconnection from digital devices, platforms, or tools has gained traction from users and, subsequently, in academic discourse. A rapidly growing body of research focuses on so-called digital disconnection practices. However, the literature is highly scattered, with limited comprehensive work and consensus on essential foundations for this field. This study provides a systematic review of the digital disconnection literature following the PRISMA flow and Cochrane guidelines. We investigated 112 articles based on the following eight themes of digital disconnection: (1) definitions, (2) measurements, (3) prevalence, (4) motives, (5) strategies, (6) consequences/effectiveness, (7) relapsing, and (8) interventions. The review shows that research on this topic suffers from conceptual ambiguity and lacks consensus on terminology, definition, and measurement. As a first step to solving these lacunae, we provide a working definition, describing digital disconnection as a deliberate form of non-use of devices, platforms, features, interactions and/or messages that varies in frequency and duration with the aim of restoring or improving one’s perceived overuse, social interactions, psychological well-being, productivity, privacy and/or perceived usefulness. Moreover, we discuss the identified empirical and theoretical shortcomings and provide recommendations for future research.     

电子科学与技术专业人才的实践培养模式探索

探索人才培养模式是为了更好的培养和造就高素质的实践创新人才。本文在分析电子科学与技术自身专业特点,遵循学生的认知规律,并结合三个专业方向的基础上,构建了以"基础平台+专业实验链+实践创新平台"为架构的多层次实践教学人才培养模式。该培养模式注重专业规范教学,同时便于发挥自身办学特色。     

Is technical writing an engineering discipline?

Within the classic information technology (IT) engineering disciplines (software and hardware engineering), there is sometimes skepticism about the status of technical writing. How can the manipulation of words and images compare with the rigors of producing efficient code or densely populated boards? Many technical writers don't have a degree with “science” in the title. To outsiders, their world seems an odd one, where trivial matters like the location of hyphens are intensely debated. The author addresses the question of whether technical writing is an engineering discipline by examining an authoritative set of criteria used to define systems engineering. This examination will take the form of worked examples from systems engineering and technical writing to see how each discipline matches these criteria. The conclusion is that technical writing, done correctly, meets the strict definition of an engineering discipline. Technical writing is not consistently accepted as such because of cultural differences, most specifically noted in the relative weight of academic qualifications     

Service disciplines for guaranteed performance service inpacket-switching networks

While today's computer networks support only best-effort service, future packet-switching integrated-services networks will have to support real-time communication services that allow clients to transport information with performance guarantees expressed in terms of delay, delay jitter, throughput, and loss rate. An important issue in providing guaranteed performance service is the choice of the packet service discipline at switching nodes. In this paper, we survey several service disciplines that are proposed in the literature to provide per-connection end-to-end performance guarantees in packet-switching networks. We describe their mechanisms, their similarities and differences and the performance guarantees they can provide. Various issues and tradeoffs in designing service disciplines for guaranteed performance service are discussed, and a general framework for studying and comparing these disciplines are presented     

Critical Discourse Studies and/in communication: theories,methodologies, and pedagogies at the intersections

ABSTRACT

In this introductory essay, we interrogate the relationship between Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and communication studies, ultimately arguing for a firmer cross-fertilization between the two. We start by tracing the events that led to this special issue as a way to document the relatively brief, scattered, but at the same time promising trajectories of CDS within communication scholarship. We then take a step back and outside of the discipline to locate different precursors, practitioners, and outlets that contributed to shaping a unique approach to sociodiscursive phenomena first labeled as Critical Discourse Analysis. Next, we identify the more recent, broadening turn toward CDS, and its implications in terms of theories, methods, and objects of study. Drawing on scholarship in communication studies and related disciplines, as well as on the contributions to this special issue, we end by reviewing different challenges and possibilities for the traversing trajectories of CDS and communication studies.     

Standardized active measurements on a tier 1 IP backbone

Synthetic or active measurements are often used to characterize IP performance; however, it is rare to find them used to resolve problems in an operational setting. We show that the active monitoring system in the AT&T IP backbone provide's a comprehensive view of network performance that is complementary to traditional element level monitoring, making it an integral part of network management. This paper discusses the design and implementation of these active measurements in the network. We continuously monitor "path-level" performance metrics such as round-trip delay, loss, jitter, and reordering events to proactively detect impairments. Our system relies on the promotion of key metrics to the operational displays, while maintaining a rich set of statistics for analyzing rare and unforeseen events. This timely information enables us to react,quickly to performance degradation, avoiding any sustained effect on customer applications. The results also help us understand the network's ability to support time-sensitive application performance. Selected "interesting" events observed are presented, including detection of degradation caused by low-level bit errors on a physical link, detection of route changes on the network and their impact on real-time applications, and finally detection of reordering caused by forwarding loops.     

对“信号与系统”课程双语教学的启发

“信号与系统”是高等学校本科教育中与通信工程、计算机科学与技术以及控制工程等学科有关的各专业的一门重要的专业基础课程。它对理工科学生自学能力、分析问题和解决问题的能力的提高,对学生科学思维、实践技能和综合素质的培养有着深远的影响。而随着我校的国际化发展趋势和学院学科评估及培养计划改革等举措的逐步深入,“信号与系统”转变成为一门重要的专业发展选修课程。但是,该课程在达成学生理论、计算和操作三方面的重要意义丝毫不减,加之该课程源于国外经典教材,因此更加具备了国际化背景,成为国内学生探究和掌握相关学科领域专业词汇和地道表达的“抓手”性课程。     

创客视角下中学生创新精神和实践能力的培养研究——基于潍坊市实验学校创客课程模式构建

学校依托创客课程,引导学生积极发现问题、自主探索问题、主动解决问题,将创意方案转化为有形物品或现有物品的优化改进。在整个创意物化过程中提高学生的科技前沿意识,培养学生“纵向跨年级、横向跨学科”解决问题能力和创意物化能力,在综合实践活动中培养学生的创新精神和实践能力。     

高速网络环境下的P2P流媒体业务分析和识别方法

The growing P2P streaming traffic brings a variety of problems and challenges to ISP networks and service providers.A P2P streaming traffic classification method based on sampling technology is presented in this paper.By analyzing traffic statistical features and network behavior of P2P streaming,a group of flow characteristics were found,which can make P2P streaming more recognizable among other applications.Attributes from Netflow and those proposed by us are compared in terms of classification accuracy,a...     

Randomizing Functions: Simulation of a Discrete Probability Distribution Using a Source of Unknown Distribution

In this paper, we characterize functions that simulate independent unbiased coin flips from independent coin flips of unknown bias. We call such functions randomizing. Our characterization of randomizing functions enables us to identify the functions that generate the largest average number of fair coin flips from a fixed number of biased coin flips. We show that these optimal functions are efficiently computable. Then we generalize the characterization, and we present a method to simulate an arbitrary rational probability distribution optimally (in terms of the average number of output digits) and efficiently (in terms of computational complexity) from outputs of many-faced dice of unknown distribution. We also study randomizing functions on exhaustive prefix-free sets     

Communicating in public policy matters: addressing the problem ofnon-congruent sites of discourse

It is noted that communication scholars and teachers agree that the first step in joining a community is to learn the conventions of discourse of the target discipline. But argument in public policy arenas often involves multiple disciplines and must address ethical as well as technical issues. The authors term such discourse forums `noncongruent sites' and explore the problem of how to determine when the field-specific discourse convections of specialists appropriately give way to ethical argument. It is argued that engineers must be educated to take a more than purely technical perspective on public issues. The curriculum at one institution is examined, and examples of courses and projects which tend to promote a broader perspective are given