Anatomy of a portable digital mediaprocessor

Portable devices equipped with imaging, video, and audio functionality are proliferating rapidly, and manufacturers are shipping hundreds of millions of such devices. A general-purpose processor (GPP) typically consumes tens of watts to nearly a hundred watts, while a high-performance digital still cameras main processor consumes only hundreds of milliwatts to nearly half a watt. Designing a mediaprocessor with performance comparable to that of a GPP at a power budget two orders of magnitude lower and a cost more than an order of magnitude lower poses quite a challenge. To meet requirements and reduce overall system cost, mediaprocessor designers must integrate the device with an extensive set of peripherals. For performance, cost, and power reasons, application-specific integrated circuits have traditionally been the most popular choice for portable media systems. We discuss the architecture of the DM310, a highly integrated portable digital mediaprocessor, manufactured in a 0.13-micron process.     

Distributed Cooperative Outdoor Multirobot Localization and Mapping

The subject of this article is a scheme for distributed outdoor localization of a team of robots and the use of the robot team for outdoor terrain mapping. Localization is accomplished via Extended Kalman Filtering (EKF). In the distributed EKF-based scheme for localization, heterogeneity of the available sensors is exploited in the absence or degradation of absolute sensors aboard the team members. The terrain mapping technique then utilizes localization information to facilitate the fusion of vision-based range information of environmental features with changes in elevation profile across the terrain. The result is a terrain matrix from which a metric map is then generated. The proposed algorithms are implemented using field data obtained from a team of robots traversing an uneven outdoor terrain.     

Surface Alloying of Nitrogen to Improve Corrosion Resistance of Steels and Stainless Steels

It is well known that the addition of nitrogen to steels and stainless steels enhances the passivity and localized corrosion resistance, in addition to improving the mechanical properties. Selective alloying of surfaces of steels and stainless steels with nitrogen could also enhance the corrosion resistance and improve the mechanical properties without affecting the bulk properties. Techniques like ion implantation, laser alloying, nitriding, etc. can be effectively used to introduce very high levels of nitrogen. In addition, these techniques can also produce modified surfaces with novel microstructures to further improve the properties. The surface alloying methods also provide an opportunity to selectively nitrogenate the surface of finished components in order to obtain better properties. The review highlights the techniques, modifications and the properties obtained further.     

Seismic Deformation of Bar Mat Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls. II: A Multiblock Model

A relatively simple rigid plastic multiblock computational model has been developed to predict the permanent seismic displacement of mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. The model formulation was based on many observations made from a series of centrifuge tests carried out on many different configurations of MSE walls. The proposed model is similar to the sliding block method of Newmark. The approach accounted for the variation in acceleration within the backfill and the nonuniform nature of the permanent wall face deformation. The predictive capability of the proposed model has been verified using centrifuge test results obtained for four MSE walls each subjected to three earthquake excitations with strength varying between 0.48 and 0.9g. The analytical model captures many aspects of the characteristic deformation behavior of MSE walls observed in the centrifuge tests. In each of the eleven wall displacement cases studied, the backfill friction angle that yielded a good match between the computed and measured maximum wall displacement was consistent with the corresponding laboratory measured values.     

Mechanical property enhancement of non‐bonding electrospun mats via adhesive

In the present study, the effect of adhesive on the morphology of different electrospun polymeric mats was investigated. The modification of two polymers, poly(methyl methacrylate) and poly(vinyl chloride), was carried out by blending the polymers with different amounts of poly(butyl acrylate) (PBA) adhesive to investigate the effect of different amounts of adhesive with heat hardener in hybrid mats. The introduction of various concentrations of PBA into different polymer solutions led to the formation of point‐bonded electrospun fibrous mats. Scanning electron microscopy images indicated that point‐bonded polymer/adhesive fibers were uniformly distributed throughout the mats. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, contact angle measurements and thermogravimetric analysis were used to study the different properties of the hybrid mats. The tensile strength of the blended fibrous electrospun mats was increased effectively. This enhancement of the mechanical properties of the mats due to the presence of adhesive increases the number of potential applications of the electrospun mats, especially for mechanically weak polymers. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

On the onset of fracture as a silicon-based polymer converts into the ceramic phase

Silicon-based polymers evolve into refractory ceramics when heated gradually up to ~1000°C. The conversion is accompanied by the loss of gaseous species, and by a two-fold increase in density. The shrinkage can produce microcracks if the heating rate is too high, or if the specimen is too thick. This communication builds on earlier work whereby the measurement of gas evolution, and its relationship with viscous flow, are related to the onset of fracture in disk-shaped green (polymer) samples. The onset is determined as a function of the thickness of the disks, and of the heating rate. The results are presented in the form of a processing map. The overlay with gas evolution, and strain-rate measurements, suggest that fracture initiates with the release of hydrogen and methane, starting at temperatures near 750°C.     

Identification of Natural Products as Potential Pharmacological Chaperones for Protein Misfolding Diseases

Defective protein folding and accumulation of misfolded proteins is associated with neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, secretory, and metabolic disorders. Efforts are being made to identify small-molecule modulators or structural-correctors for conformationally destabilized proteins implicated in various protein aggregation diseases. Using a metastable-reporter-based primary screen, we evaluated pharmacological chaperone activity of a diverse class of natural products. We found that a flavonoid glycoside ( C-10 , chrysoeriol-7-O-β-D-glucopyranoside) stabilizes metastable proteins, prevents its aggregation, and remodels the oligomers into protease-sensitive species. Data was corroborated with additional secondary screen with disease-specific pathogenic protein. In vitro and cell-based experiments showed that C-10 inhibits α-synuclein aggregation which is implicated in synucleinopathies-related neurodegeneration. C-10 interferes in its structural transition into β-sheeted fibrils and mitigates α-synuclein aggregation-associated cytotoxic effects. Computational modeling suggests that C-10 binds to unique sites in α-synuclein which may interfere in its aggregation amplification. These findings open an avenue for comprehensive SAR development for flavonoid glycosides as pharmacological chaperones for metastable and aggregation-prone proteins implicated in protein conformational diseases.     

Simplified MATLAB Solution Schemes of Heat Transfer Equations

A simplified generalized finite difference solution using MATLAB has been developed for steady‐state heat transfer in a bar, slab, cylinder, and sphere. Solutions are given for all types of boundary conditions: temperature and flux boundary conditions. A generalized solution for 2D heat transfer in a slab is also developed. Solutions have been compared with analytical solutions and there is very good agreement between computed and analytical solutions. The solution can easily be extended to similar types of situations in fluid flow and mass transport operations.     

Various strategies for reducing Nox emissions of biodiesel fuel used in conventional diesel engines: A review

Energy demand, decreasing fossil fuel reserves, and health-related issues about pollutants have led researchers to search for renewable alternative fuels to either partially or fully replace fossil fuels. Among many alternative fuels, biodiesel became one of the most popular choices due to similar properties to that of conventional diesel. Biodiesel produces slightly lower brake thermal efficiency compared to that of conventional biodiesel, but has an advantage of reduced emissions of CO₂, CO, HC, and smoke. However, biodiesel shows higher NOx emission which, when used in increased biodiesel market, may become a serious problem. Various strategies were attempted by different researcher to reduce NOx emissions. In this paper, various strategies, adapted for reducing NOx emissions of biodiesel fuel used in diesel engines for automobile applications, are reviewed and discussed. The strategies are grouped into three major groups, namely combustion treatments, exhaust after-treatments, and fuel treatments. Among various strategies discussed, fuel treatments, such as low temperature combustion, mixing fuel additives and reformulating fuel composition, reduce NOx emission without compromising other emission and performance characteristics and they seem to be promising for future biodiesel fuel.     

A PHRASE GRAMMAR-BASED CONCEPTUAL INDEXING PARADIGM

ABSTRACT

Present day information retrieval systems largely ignore the issues of lexical and compositional semantics, and rely mainly on some statistical measures for choosing or evolving an indexing scheme. This has been the reason for the decreasing precision in their responses, given an exponentially increasing number of Web pages. The work reported in this paper addresses this issue from a linguistic point of view. We show that the detection of domain-specific phrases can capture the task-specific semantics of documents. We introduce the notion of n*-gram formalism to characterize the domain-specific phrases and their variants, taking a few sample domains. A method to construct a phrase grammar from a small set of documents is proposed. A method of conceptual indexing based on the phrase grammar has also been proposed. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have designed a versatile system that can perform concept-based retrieval, in addition to several document-processing tasks, such as text classification, extraction-based summarization, context tracking, and semantic tagging. Collectively, the system can address the semantic content of documents. Considering the fact that an average user prefers highly relevant results in the top-ranked subset to an exhaustively retrieved set, it is shown that the proposed system performs better in that it retrieves documents that are more conceptually relevant than those retrieved by Google, and at 95% confidence level.