Effect of channel geometry on solute dispersion in pressure-driven microfluidic systems

Pressure-driven transport of fluid and solute samples is often desirable in microfluidic devices, particularly where sufficient electroosmotic flow rates cannot be realized or the use of an electric field is restricted. Unfortunately, this mode of actuation also leads to hydrodynamic dispersion due to the inherent fluid shear in the system. While such dispersivity is known to scale with the square of the Peclet number based on the narrower dimension of the conduit (often the channel depth), the proportionality constant can vary significantly depending on its actual cross section. In this article, we review previous studies to understand the effect of commonly microfabricated channel cross sections on the Taylor–Aris dispersion of solute slugs in simple pressure-driven flow systems. We also analyze some recently proposed optimum designs which can reduce the contribution to this band broadening arising from the presence of the channel sidewalls. Finally, new simulation results have been presented in the last section of this paper which describe solutal spreading due to bowing of microchannels that can occur from stresses developed during their fabrication or operation under high-pressure conditions.     

UbiqStack: a taxonomy for a ubiquitous computing software stack

This paper describes a taxonomy for a ubiquitous computing software stack called UbiqStack. Through the lens of the UbiqStack taxonomy we survey a variety of subsystems designed to be the building blocks from which sophisticated infrastructures for ubiquitous computing are assembled. Our experience shows that many of these building blocks fit neatly into one of the five UbiqStack categories, each containing functionally-equivalent components. Effectively identifying the best-fit “Lego pieces”, which in turn determines the composite functionality of the resulting infrastructure, is critical. The selection process, however, is impeded by the lack of convention for labeling these classes of building blocks. The lack of clarity with respect to what ready-made subsystems are available within each class often results in naive re-implementation of ready-made components, monolithic and clumsy implementations, and implementations that impose non-standard interfaces onto the applications above. This paper describes the UbiqStack classes of subsystems and explores each in light of the experience gained over 2 years of active development of both ubiquitous computing applications and software infrastructures for their deployment.     

A high-performance computing method for data allocation in distributed database systems

Enhancing the performance of the DDBs (Distributed Database system) can be done by speeding up the computation of the data allocation, leading to higher speed allocation decisions and resulting in smaller data redundancy and shorter processing time. This paper deals with an integrated method for grouping the distributed sites into clusters and customizing the database fragments allocation to the clusters and their sites. We design a high speed clustering and allocating method to determine which fragments would be allocated to which cluster and site so as to maintain data availability and a constant systemic reliability, and evaluate the performance achieved by this method and demonstrate its efficiency by means of tabular and graphical representation. We tested our method over different network sites and found it reduces the data transferred between the sites during the execution time, minimizes the communication cost needed for processing applications, and handles the database queries and meets their future needs.     

Dynamic provisioning in multi-tenant service clouds

Cloud-based systems promise an on-demand service provisioning system along with a ??pay-as-you-use?? policy. In the case of multi-tenant systems this would mean dynamic creation of a tenant by integrating existing cloud-based services on the fly. Presently, dynamic creation of a tenant is handled by building the required components from scratch. Although multi-tenant systems help providers save cost by allocating multiple tenants to the same instance of an application, they incur huge reconfiguration costs. Cost and time spent on these reconfiguration activities can be reduced by re-constructing tenants from existing tenant configurations supported by service providers. Multi-tenant cloud-based systems also lack the facility of allowing clients to specify their requirements. Giving clients the flexibility to specify requirements helps them avoid spending an excessive amount of time and effort looking through a list of services, many of which might not be relevant to them. Moreover, dynamic provisioning in the cloud requires an integrated solution across the technology stack (software, platform and infrastructure) combining functional, non-functional and resource allocation requirements. Existing research works in the area of web service matching, although numerous, still fall short, since they usually consider each requirement type in isolation and cannot provide an integrated solution. To that end, in this paper we investigate the features needed for dynamic service provisioning on the cloud. We propose a novel User Interface-Tenant Selector-Customizer (UTC) model and approach, which enables cloud-based services to be systematically modeled and provisioned as variants of existing service tenants in the cloud. Our approach considers functional, non-functional and resource allocation requirements, which are explicitly specified by the client via the user interface component of the model. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first such integrated approach. We illustrate our ideas using a realistic running example, and also present a proof-of-concept prototype built using IBM??s Rational Software Architect modeling tool. We also present experimental results demonstrating the applicability of our matching algorithm. Our results show significant reduction in matching time with the help of an elimination process that reduces the search space needed for performing matching.     

Predictive models for multibiometric systems

Recognizing a subject given a set of biometrics is a fundamental pattern recognition problem. This paper builds novel statistical models for multibiometric systems using geometric and multinomial distributions. These models are generic as they are only based on the similarity scores produced by a recognition system. They predict the bounds on the range of indices within which a test subject is likely to be present in a sorted set of similarity scores. These bounds are then used in the multibiometric recognition system to predict a smaller subset of subjects from the database as probable candidates for a given test subject. Experimental results show that the proposed models enhance the recognition rate beyond the underlying matching algorithms for multiple face views, fingerprints, palm prints, irises and their combinations.     

Vartalaap: A distributed multicast communication system

With the increasing proliferation of computer networks and distributed systems, there is a growing number of applications using multicast communication. This paper presents the Vartalaap system developed at IIT, Bombay. Vartalaap is an hierarchical distributed system for multicast communication over a network, implemented in a hardware-independent fashion. The multicast is achieved without resorting to unnecessary broadcasting of messages over the network. Issues covered in this paper include the primitives for multicast, the multicast model and the system architecture. We discuss the implementation of Vartalaap and compare it with some other systems. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations of the current implementation and directions for future work.     

Probabilistic Belief Contraction

Probabilistic belief contraction has been a much neglected topic in the field of probabilistic reasoning. This is due to the difficulty in establishing a reasonable reversal of the effect of Bayesian conditionalization on a probabilistic distribution. We show that indifferent contraction, a solution proposed by Ramer to this problem through a judicious use of the principle of maximum entropy, is a probabilistic version of a full meet contraction. We then propose variations of indifferent contraction, using both the Shannon entropy measure as well as the Hartley entropy measure, with an aim to avoid excessive loss of beliefs that full meet contraction entails.     

Robust Estimation of GARMA Model Parameters with an Application to Cointegration among Interest Rates of Industrialized Countries

We review the literature on long memory ARFIMA and GARMA models andintroduce a new efficient estimator for GARMA models, which we show to berobust. Next we conduct a Monte Carlo study to demonstate the power of theDickie–Fuller test when the data are generated from a stationary GARMAprocess. We conclude with a brief discussion of cointegration in the contextof GARMA models with an application to international interest rates.     

Identification of tubulin drug binding sites and prediction of relative differences in binding affinities to tubulin isotypes using digital signal processing

Microtubules are involved in numerous cellular processes including chromosome segregation during mitosis and, as a result, their constituent protein, tubulin, has become a successful target of several chemotherapeutic drugs. In general, these drugs bind indiscriminately to tubulin within both cancerous and healthy cells, resulting in unwanted side effects. However, differences between beta-tubulin isotypes expressed in a wide range of cell types may aid in the development of anti-tubulin drugs having increased specificity for only certain types of cells. Here, we describe a digital signal processing (DSP) method that is capable of predicting hot spots for the tubulin family of proteins as well as determining relative differences in binding affinities to these hot spots based only on the primary sequence of 10 human tubulin isotypes. Due to the fact that several drug binding sites have already been characterized within beta-tubulin, we are able to correlate hot spots with the binding sites for known chemotherapy drugs. We have also verified the accuracy of this method using the correlation between the binding affinities of characterized drugs and the tubulin isotypes. Additionally, the DSP method enables the rapid estimation of relative differences in binding affinities within the binding sites of tubulin isotypes that are yet to be experimentally determined.     

Expert system approach in design of mechanical components

The present investigation is aimed toward the development of knowledge-based aids for the design of mechanical systems. We have developed and implemented the knowledgebased aid system, which includes MEET and DPMED. The basic approach of MEET follows along the lines ofDesign=Refinement+ Constraint Propagation. This approach has been proven successful in the circuit design domain. Our attempts to utilize MEET have convinced us that we need to extend this methodology to solve mechanical design problems. The DPMED methodology has been applied to design gear-pairs, v-belts, bearings, and shafts. Rules for selecting materials, critical design criteria, and so on are incorporated as part of the rule-system. In order for DPMED to select the design parameter values within the feasible design space, design criteria need to be investigated. Based on these criteria and input/output specifications, DPMED attempts to perform parameter selections. DPMED uses a general hill-climbing algorithm to guide the search.