Personalized Healthcare System for Chronic Disease Care in Cloud Environment

The rapid increase in the number of patients with chronic diseases is an important public healthcare issue in many countries, which accelerates many studies on a healthcare system that can, whenever and wherever, extract and process patient data. A patient with a chronic disease conducts self‐management in an out‐of‐hospital environment, particularly in an at‐home environment, so it is important to provide integrated and personalized healthcare services for effective care. To help provide effective care for chronic disease patients, we propose a service flow and a new cloud‐based personalized healthcare system architecture supporting both at‐home and at‐hospital environments. The system considers the different characteristics of at‐hospital and at‐home environments, and it provides various chronic disease care services. A prototype implementation and a predicted cost model are provided to show the effectiveness of the system. The proposed personalized healthcare system can support cost‐effective disease care in an at‐hospital environment and personalized self‐management of chronic disease in an at‐home environment.     

The muscle activation method: an approach to impedance control of brain-machine interfaces through a musculoskeletal model of the arm

Current demonstrations of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) have shown the potential for controlling neuroprostheses under pure motion control. For interaction with objects, however, pure motion control lacks the information required for versatile manipulation. This paper investigates the idea of applying impedance control in a BMI system. An extraction algorithm incorporating a musculoskeletal arm model was developed for this purpose. The new algorithm, called the muscle activation method (MAM), was tested on cortical recordings from a behaving monkey. The MAM was found to predict motion parameters with as much accuracy as a linear filter. Furthermore, it successfully predicted limb interactions with novel force fields, which is a new and significant capability lacking in other algorithms.     

Modeling Transmission of Microwaves Through Dynamic Vegetation

In this paper, we develop a model for estimating canopy opacity tau for sweet corn. We estimate the refractive index based upon moisture distribution in the corn during different stages of growth. The moisture distribution was observed during two season-long field experiments. We found that the moisture content decreased linearly as the height of the corn increased, with the distribution closer to Gaussian in the fruit region during reproductive stages. The tau obtained from our model was compared to that estimated using a widely used Jackson model. In general, our tau estimates were higher than those obtained using the Jackson model, with a root mean-square difference (rmsd) of up to 0.23 Np between the two models. The tau values were used in a microwave emission model at C-band, and the model estimates of brightness were compared with field observations. We found that the model brightness temperatures matched well with observations, with rmsd values of 5.13 and 4.88 K, using our model and the Jackson model for tau, respectively.     

直写ASIC技术的新发展

采用直写ＡＳＩＣ技术能缩短产品的研制周期,降低研制成本,无风险地进行了批量生产,加快ＡＳＩＣ投放市场的速度。分析了直写ＡＳＩＣ技术的特点,介绍了激光直写机的原理,展望了此项技术的应用前景。     

Optimized contrast enhancement for real-time image and video dehazing

A fast and optimized dehazing algorithm for hazy images and videos is proposed in this work. Based on the observation that a hazy image exhibits low contrast in general, we restore the hazy image by enhancing its contrast. However, the overcompensation of the degraded contrast may truncate pixel values and cause information loss. Therefore, we formulate a cost function that consists of the contrast term and the information loss term. By minimizing the cost function, the proposed algorithm enhances the contrast and preserves the information optimally. Moreover, we extend the static image dehazing algorithm to real-time video dehazing. We reduce flickering artifacts in a dehazed video sequence by making transmission values temporally coherent. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm effectively removes haze and is sufficiently fast for real-time dehazing applications.     

Enhanced carrier mobility and photon-harvesting property by introducing Au nano-particles in bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells

In this study, polymer solar cells (PSCs) doped with Au nanoparticles (Au NPs) were successfully fabricated to maximize the photon-harvesting properties on the photoactive layer. In addition, a conductivity-enhanced hybrid buffer layer was introduced to improve the photon absorption properties and effectively separate the generated charges by adding Au NPs and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) to the PH 500 as a buffer layer. The PSC performance was optimized with a 88% improvement over the conventional PSCs (photoactive area: 225 mm², power conversion efficiency (PCE): 3.2%) by the introduction to the buffer layer of Au NPs and DMSO at 10 wt% and 1.0 wt%, respectively, and with 15 wt% Au NP doping in the photoactive layer. The internal resistance was decreased due to the increased photocurrent caused by the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effect of the Au NPs in the photoactive layer and by the improvement of carrier mobility induced by the DMSO doping of the buffer layer. As a result, the series resistance (R_S) deceased from 42.3 to 19.7 Ω cm² while the shunt resistance (R_SH) increased from 339 to 487 Ω cm².     

High Efficiency Perovskite Solar Cells Exceeding 22% via a Photo-Assisted Two-Step Sequential Deposition

One of the most effective methods to achieve high-performance perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is to employ additives as crystallization agents or to passivate defects. Tri-iodide ion has been known as an efficient additive to improve the crystallinity, grain size, and morphology of perovskite films. However, the generation and control of this tri-iodide ion are challenging. Herein, an efficient method to produce tri-iodide ion in a precursor solution using a photoassisted process for application in PSCs is developed. Results suggest that the tri-iodide ion can be synthesized rapidly when formamidinium iodide (FAI) dissolved isopropyl alcohol (IPA) solution is exposed to LED light. Specifically, the photoassisted FAI–IPA solution facilitates the formation of fine perovskite films with high crystallinity, large grain size, and low trap density, thereby improving the device performance up to 22%. This study demonstrates that the photoassisted process in FAI dissolved IPA solution can be an alternative strategy to fabricate highly efficient PSCs with significantly reduced processing times.     

多通道有源控制算法硬件实现及影响因素研究

在多通道有源噪声控制系统的硬件实现中,当通道数目增大或滤波器长度较长时,常规的多通道算法运算量急剧增加,使控制器可能无法实时实现。研究了局部迭代算法在多通道有源控制系统中的应用,讨论了系统选取不同通道数和滤波器长度时,对算法硬件实现的影响。     

A source degenerated LC quadrature VCO (SD-QVCO) using 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS

This letter presents a fully integrated BiCMOS quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO). The QVCO consists of two nMOSFET cross-coupled oscillator stacked in series with source degenerated HBT transistors. SiGe HBT introduces low flicker noise compared to CMOS devices. To generate quadrature phase signals with strong coupling strength, the proposed design uses two MOS-coupled LC-tank cores instead of passive device-coupled cores. This source degeneration topology can improve the phase noise performance of the QVCO as compared to the sub-VCO. The proposed QVCO has been implemented with the TSMC 0.18 μm SiGe 3P6M BiCMOS process, can generate quadrature signals in the frequency range of 4.52–5.05 GHz with core power consumption of 5.76 mW at the dc bias of 1.8 V. At 4.53 GHz, phase noise at 1 MHz offset is ?124.52 dBc/Hz. The die area of the fabricated prototype is 0.453 × 0.898 mm².     

Low turn-on voltage and series resistance of polarization-induced InGaN-GaN LEDs by using p-InGaN/p-GaN superlattice

We have demonstrated high-performance InGaN-GaN multiple quantum-wells light-emitting diodes (LEDs) using polarization-induced (PI) p-InGaN-GaN superlattice. Electrical measurements show that PI LEDs produce much lower series resistance and turn-on voltage (at 20 mA) as compared to those of normal LEDs without the superlattice. It is also shown that the output power and photon wavelength of the PI LEDs remain electrically stable up to a high stress region of 200 mA. However, those of normal LEDs become electrically and optically degraded in excess of 120 mA. These results show that the use of the PI effect is very effective to the improvement of the electrical properties of LEDs.