Retinal neurostimulator for a multifocal vision prosthesis.

A neurostimulator application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) with scalable circuitry that can stimulate 14 channels, has been developed for an epi-retinal vision prosthesis. This ASIC was designed to allow seven identical units to be connected to control up to 98 channels, with the ability to stimulate 14 electrodes simultaneously. The neurostimulator forms part of a vision prosthesis, designed to restore vision to patients who have lost their sight due to retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. For charge balance, the neurostimulator was designed to stimulate with current sources and sinks operating together, and with the ability to drive a hexagonal mosaic of electrodes to reduce the electrical crosstalk that occurs when multiple bipolar stimulation sites are active simultaneously. A hexagonal mosaic of electrodes surrounds each stimulation site and has been shown to effectively isolate each site, increasing the ability to inject localized independent charge into multiple regions simultaneously.     

Residual Stress Simulation of Injection Molding

In this study, distribution and history of residual stresses in plaque-like geometries are simulated based on linear thermoviscoelastic model, which helps to understand the mechanics and evolution of the residual stresses in the injection molding process. The numerical calculation of direction, combined with the specified boundary conditions. Results show that the stress variation across the thickness exhibits a high surface tensile value changing to a compressive peak value close to the surface, with the core region experiencing a parabolic tensile peak. Residual stress distribution throughout the thickness is almost same along the flowpath and the final residual stresses value near the gate is lower than the value near the end of flowpath.     

Data mining of resilience indicators

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced several financial setbacks, including speculative attacks in 1998 and the SARS outbreak in 2003. Financial stresses of this nature are unanticipated, and not all of the dangers can be predicted by the examination of market information and macroeconomic indicators. The Early Warning System (EWS) that has been adopted by the International Monetary Fund may not be able to predict future financial crises for all possible scenarios, because shocks come in many different forms. To supplement the EWS, this paper proposes a data mining framework to measure the resilience of an economy. The resilience framework does not predict a crisis, but rather assesses the current state of health of an economy and its ability to withstand a financial shock should one occur. The framework is based on a feedback system consisting of two stages. The first stage assigns a resilience score to each economy based on a fuzzy logic scoring scheme that is built on the ambiguous reasoning of experts. The second stage uses the classification tree approach to estimate thresholds for each economic indicator, and examines the quality of the fuzzy score. The result from the second stage is then passed back to the first stage as feedback. The final result is obtained when the feedback system reaches its equilibrium state. The proposed resilience framework is applied to the external-sector and the public-sector economies of several countries to illustrate its applicability.     

Microstructure and fatigue characteristics of direct chill cast and electromagnetic cast 2024 Al alloy ingots

The distinct advantages of the electromagnetic casting (EMC) process consist in the presence of stirring motions in the melt, which lead to significant grain size reduction in solidified ingot. Furthermore, surface and subsurface qualities are improved due to the absence of ingot mold. However, it is impossible to achieve the aforementioned advantages in conventional direct chill casting (DCC). In order to contrast the before and after heat treatments of the microstructural and mechanical characteristics of EMC and DCC 2024 aluminium alloys, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffractions (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), etc. were carried out. Compared with the DCC ingot, the EMC ingot has better mechanical properties not only in the ascast condition but also in the as-aged condition. The DSC curves show that the EMC specimens have high enthalpy, i.e., the thermal kinetic energy to form precipitates during the aging treatment process. Despite heat treatments applied to the DCC ingot, it fails to attain the same mechanical properties as the EMC ingot. Moreover, considering the expernsive scalping operation for DCC ingots, the EMC technique, which offers a lower manufacturing cost, is one of the best manufacturing methods used in obtaining the ingots of wrought aluminum alloys.     

WLAN chip antenna mountable above the system ground plane of a mobile device

A novel wireless local-area network (WLAN) chip antenna suitable to be mounted above the system ground plane of a mobile device is presented. The antenna in the study is easily fabricated from folding a single metal plate onto a foam base, and mainly comprises a short-circuited radiating strip and an antenna ground. The antenna ground occupies the bottom surface and two adjacent side surfaces of the foam base. When the antenna is mounted at the corner of the system ground plane, this antenna ground structure is expected to effectively reduce the antenna's possible fringing electromagnetic fields inside the mobile device. In this case, when the associated element such as the radio-frequency shielding metal case is placed under the proposed antenna, small or negligible variations in the antenna performance are obtained. Design considerations of the proposed antenna for WLAN operation in the 2.4 GHz band are described, and results of the constructed prototypes are presented.     

Surface-mount dual-loop antenna for 2.4/5 GHz WLAN operation

A surface-mount dual-loop antenna suitable for dual-frequency WLAN operation is presented. For achieving dual-frequency operation with a compact size, the antenna comprises two loop strips of different sizes printed on a flexible printed circuit board, which is then bent and attached onto a foam base of compact size. The antenna shows an attractive feature of high antenna gain, about 4 and 5 dBi for frequencies across the 2.4 and 5 GHz WLAN bands, respectively.     

东营凹陷南斜坡储集层成岩作用及对储集性能的影响

东营凹陷南斜坡孔店组岩石类型以岩屑长石砂岩为主 ,长石砂岩和岩屑砂岩次之 ,其中岩屑长石砂岩含量超过 90 %。砂岩成岩作用包括压实作用、胶结作用、溶蚀作用、交代作用等 ,其中胶结作用使储层原生孔隙迅速变差 ,而溶蚀作用是次生空隙发育的主要因素。孔店组砂岩成岩作用进入晚成岩A期 ,期间经历了早成岩A期、B期。影响成岩作用的主要因素为构造演化背景、岩石成分、沉积环境、孔隙流体性质等。     

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin-film transistor arrays fabricated by digital lithography

A jet-printed digital-lithographic method, in place of conventional photolithography, was used to fabricate 64 /spl times/ 64 pixel (300 /spl mu/m pitch) matrix addressing thin-film transistor (TFT) arrays. The average hydrogenated amorphous silicon TFT device within an array had a threshold voltage of /spl sim/3.5 V, carrier mobility of 0.7 cm/sup 2//V/spl middot/s, subthreshold slope of 0.76 V/decade, and an on/off ratio of 10/sup 8/.     

On teletraffic applications to OBS

We provide teletraffic models for loss probability evaluation of optical burst switching (OBS). We show that the popular Engset formula is not exact for OBS modeling and demonstrate that in certain cases it is not appropriate. A new exact model is provided. The various models are compared using numerical results for various OBS alternatives with and without burst segmentation.