FracMAP: A user-interactive package for performing simulation and orientation-specific morphology analysis of fractal-like solid nano-agglomerates

Computer simulation techniques have found extensive use in establishing empirical relationships between three-dimensional (3d) and two-dimensional (2d) projected properties of particles produced by the process of growth through the agglomeration of smaller particles (monomers). In this paper, we describe a package, FracMAP, that has been written to simulate 3d quasi-fractal agglomerates and create their 2d pixelated projection images by restricting them to stable orientations as commonly encountered for quasi-fractal agglomerates collected on filter media for electron microscopy. Resulting 2d images are analyzed for their projected morphological properties.

Program summary

Program title: FracMAPCatalogue identifier: AEDD_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEDD_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 4722No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 27 229Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: C++Computer: PCOperating system: Windows, LinuxRAM: 2.0 MegabytesClassification: 7.7Nature of problem: Solving for a suitable fractal agglomerate construction under constraints of typical morphological parameters.Solution method: Monte Carlo approximation.Restrictions: Problem complexity is not representative of run-time, since Monte Carlo iterations are of a constant complexity.Additional comments: The distribution file contains two versions of the FracMAP code, one for Windows and one for Linux.Running time: 1 hour for a fractal agglomerate of size 25 on a single processor.     

A Universal BIST Approach for Virtex-Ultrascale Architecture

Interconnected cells, Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs), and input/output (I/O) pads are all present in every Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) structure. The interconnects are formed by the physical paths for connecting the blocks . The combinational and sequential circuits are used in the logic blocks to execute logical functions. The FPGA includes two different tests called interconnect testing and logical testing. Instead of using an additional circuitry, the Built-in-Self-Test (BIST) logic is coded into an FPGA, which is then reconfigured to perform its specific operation after the testing is completed. As a result, additional test circuits for the FPGA board are no longer required. The FPGA BIST has no area overhead or performance reduction issues like conventional BIST. A resource-efficient testing scheme is essential to assure the appropriate operation of FPGA look-up tables for effectively testing the functional operation. In this work, the Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs) of virtex-ultrascale FPGAs are tested using a BIST with a simple architecture. To evaluate the CLBs’ capabilities including distributed modes of operation of Random Access Memory (RAM), several types of configurations are created. These setups have the ability to identify 100% stuck-at failures in every CLB. This method is suitable for all phases of FPGA testing and has no overhead or performance cost.     

Extraction of training samples from time-series MODIS imagery and its utility for land cover classification

A number of classification techniques to generate land cover maps from satellite imagery have been proposed but supervised classification with manual selection and delineation of training samples (TSs) continues to be the preferred technique. The current practices of field visits and manual delineation of TSs by visual recognition are highly demanding on both resources and time, with limited utility. With an increase in the number of Earth Observation Satellite (EOS) platforms and the enormous data that they generate, there is a need to process the data quickly and efficiently for creating global science products. Towards this goal, an attempt has been made in this article to develop a method for the automatic extraction of the TSs from the time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS – 250 m) vegetation index (VI), which can then be used for supervised classification to create a land cover map with any classification technique on relevant remotely sensed data. The TSs contained 1.27%, 0.09% and 1.18% of the total pixels for the forest, crop and water classes of the study region. Validation with Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS – 56 m)-derived national land use/land cover (LULC) map of India shows a complete agreement with the location of what can be considered as pure class pixels. The article also demonstrates and compares the utility of these TSs with an expert choice of TSs on MODIS time-series data using k-nearest neighbour, and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers and on a single-scene Linear Imaging Self-Scanning Sensor-3 (LISS-3 – 24 m) imagery using maximum likelihood (ML) classifier.     

Information‐driven robotic sampling in the coastal ocean

Efficient sampling of coastal ocean processes, especially mechanisms such as upwelling and internal waves and their influence on primary production, is critical for understanding our changing oceans. Coupling robotic sampling with ocean models provides an effective approach to adaptively sample such features. We present methods that capitalize on information from ocean models and in situ measurements, using Gaussian process modeling and objective functions, allowing sampling efforts to be concentrated to regions with high scientific interest. We demonstrate how to combine and correlate marine data from autonomous underwater vehicles, model forecasts, remote sensing satellite, buoy, and ship‐based measurements, as a means to cross‐validate and improve ocean model accuracy, in addition to resolving upper water‐column interactions. Our work is focused on the west coast of Mid‐Norway where significant influx of Atlantic Water produces a rich and complex physical–biological coupling, which is hard to measure and characterize due to the harsh environmental conditions. Results from both simulation and full‐scale sea trials are presented.     

AHW-BGOA-DNN: a novel deep learning model for epileptic seizure detection

Neural Computing and Applications - “Brain–Computer Interface” (BCI)—a real-life support system provides a way for epileptic patients to improve their quality of life. In...     

AutoTutor: Incorporating Back-Channel Feedback and Other Human-Like Conversational Behaviors into an Intelligent Tutoring System

This paper describes our recent attempts to incorporate human-like conversational behaviors into the dialog moves delivered by an animated pedagogical agent that simulates human tutors. We first present a brief overview of the modules comprising AutoTutor, an intelligent tutoring system. The second section describes a set of conversational behaviors that are being incorporated into AutoTutor. The behaviors of interest involve variations in intonation, head movements, arm and hand movements, facial expressions, eye blinking, gaze direction, and back-channel feedback. The final section presents a recent empirical study concerned with back-channel feedback events during human-to-human tutoring sessions. The back-channel feedback events emitted by tutors are mostly positive (63%), mostly verbal (77%), and immediately follow speech-act boundaries or noun-phrase boundaries (83%). Tutors also deliver back-channelevents at a very high rate when students are emitting dialog, about 13 events per minute. Conversely, 88% of students' back-channel feedback events are head nods, and they occur at unbounded locations (63%).     

Routing of a hazmat truck in the presence of weather systems

This paper focuses on the effects of weather systems on hazmat routing. We start by analyzing the effects of a weather system on a vehicle traversing a single link. This helps characterize the time-dependent attributes of a link due to movement of the weather systems. This analysis is used as a building block for the problem of finding a least risk path for hazmat transportation on a network exposed to such weather systems. Several methods are offered to solve the underlying problem, and computational results are reported. We draw two conclusions from this paper. First, it is possible to determine the time-dependent attributes for links on a network provided that some assumptions on the nature of the weather system are made. Second, heuristics can provide effective solutions for practical size problems while allowing for parking the vehicle to avoid weather system effects.     

Dielectric properties of the system Pb2 −x Nd x Li0·5Nb1·5 O6+δ

The dielectric properties of the ceramic defect pyrochlore-structured system Pb_2−x Nd _x Li_0·5Nb_1·5 O_6+δ has been studied as a function of concentrationx, frequency and temperature. The results have been analyzed for relaxation process and conduction mechanism. Now deceased.     

Cellular network configuration with co-channel and adjacent-channel interference constraints

Design of cellular networks has drawn much recent interest from the OR scientific community. A challenging issue is the handling of channel interference constraints. Co-channel interference occurs when the same channel is reused within a threshold distance. Adjacent-channel interference occurs when two channels with adjacent or nearby frequencies are used in the same cell tower. We present a mathematical programming formulation for this channel allocation problem with both types of interference constraints—it also includes decisions on location of cell towers. Our focus is on the special case where a cell tower and/or channel can interfere with at most two other towers/channels. By establishing theoretical properties for channel allocation amongst towers under this circumstance, we develop an efficient solution procedure. An iteration of the procedure uses a heuristic to locate the cell towers, then allocates the channels to the towers using a polynomial-time algorithm, and finally improves this allocation using a simulated annealing procedure. The iterative steps are embedded within an external simulated annealing method. This nested simulated annealing procedure provides encouraging computational results compared to a standard commercial solver like ILOG CPLEX 8.1. The major contribution of the work is the simultaneous consideration of co-channel and adjacent-channel interference constraints.