Thermopile-based THz antenna

This work is intended to describe the design aspects and to characterize the functionality of a novel thermopile structure applicable for detecting millimetre range and THz radiation. The proposed thermopile consists of a series of micromachined poly-crystalline silicon thermocouple strips arranged linearly. This device can act as a series of antennas; its antenna-like operation was demonstrated clearly by the strong polarization dependence when detecting microwave radiation. The sensing principle is similar to the basic operation of bolometers in that the absorbed radiation heats up the semiconductor strips, but the temperature increment is detected by the Seebeck effect instead of the resistance change. Therefore there is no read-out current and the voltage output starts from zero. In the present work we are going to show the simulation of the current distribution. The fabrication of the device will also be outlined, as well as the results of measurements performed at 13, 100?GHz, and both in broad-band THz and in infrared radiation.     

Distributed audio recorder using smart phones and proximity connections

A set of smart phones distributed in space may constitute a powerful recording device that is able to create audio/video recordings of social events in a location-aware manner. Such events are formal and informal meetings with 2 or more participants. If each person has a smart phone, this can be programmed to record his speech and skip the speech of the rest of people. Proximity networking capabilities let the individually recorded content be aggregated and distributed to each smart phone.In this paper we analyze such a scenario in which Symbian S60 platforms with Bluetooth version 1.2 stack were used. A distributed recording and content delivery framework is proposed and its performance analyzed by means of simulation and measurements. The validation of our algorithm has been performed using a prototype implementation over these platforms.     

Tailoring the atomic structure of graphene nanoribbons by scanning tunnelling microscope lithography

The practical realization of nanoscale electronics faces two major challenges: the precise engineering of the building blocks and their assembly into functional circuits. In spite of the exceptional electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, only basic demonstration devices have been realized that require time-consuming processes. This is mainly due to a lack of selective growth and reliable assembly processes for nanotubes. However, graphene offers an attractive alternative. Here we report the patterning of graphene nanoribbons and bent junctions with nanometre-precision, well-defined widths and predetermined crystallographic orientations, allowing us to fully engineer their electronic structure using scanning tunnelling microscope lithography. The atomic structure and electronic properties of the ribbons have been investigated by scanning tunnelling microscopy and tunnelling spectroscopy measurements. Opening of confinement gaps up to 0.5 eV, enabling room-temperature operation of graphene nanoribbon-based devices, is reported. This method avoids the difficulties of assembling nanoscale components and may prove useful in the realization of complete integrated circuits, operating as room-temperature ballistic electronic devices.     

A public unified bug dataset for java and its assessment regarding metrics and bug prediction

Software Quality Journal - Bug datasets have been created and used by many researchers to build and validate novel bug prediction models. In this work, our aim is to collect existing public source...     

Incrementally upgradable data center architecture using hyperbolic tessellations

Current trends in cloud computing suggest that both large, public clouds and small, private clouds will proliferate in the near future. Operational requirements, such as high bandwidth, dependability and smooth manageability, are similar for both types of clouds and their underlying data center architecture. Such requirements can be satisfied with utilizing fully distributed, low-overhead mechanisms at the algorithm level, and an efficient layer 2 implementation at the practical level. On the other hand, owners of evolving private data centers are in dire need of an incrementally upgradeable architecture which supports a small roll-out and continuous expansion in small quanta. In order to satisfy both requirements, we propose Poincaré, a data center architecture inspired by hyperbolic tessellations, which utilizes low-overhead, greedy routing. On one hand, Poincaré scales to support large data centers with low diameter, high bisection bandwidth, inherent multipath and multicast capabilities, and efficient error recovery. On the other hand, Poincaré supports incremental plug & play upgradability with regard to both servers and switches. We evaluate Poincaré using analysis, extensive simulations and a prototype implementation.     

Vessel radius mapping in an extended model of transverse relaxation

Objectives

Spin dephasing of the local magnetization in blood vessel networks can be described in the static dephasing regime (where diffusion effects may be ignored) by the established model of Yablonskiy and Haacke. However, for small capillary radii, diffusion phenomena for spin-bearing particles are not negligible.

Material and methods

In this work, we include diffusion effects for a set of randomly distributed capillaries and provide analytical expressions for the transverse relaxation times T2* and T2 in the strong collision approximation and the Gaussian approximation that relate MR signal properties with microstructural parameters such as the mean local capillary radius.

Results

Theoretical results are numerically validated with random walk simulations and are used to calculate capillary radius distribution maps for glioblastoma mouse brains at 9.4 T. For representative tumor regions, the capillary maps reveal a relative increase of mean radius for tumor tissue towards healthy brain tissue of \(128 \pm 23 \%\) (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

The presented method may be used to quantify angiogenesis or the effects of antiangiogenic therapy in tumors whose growth is associated with significant microvascular changes.

     

Optimal (short-term) pump schedule detection for water distribution systems by neutral evolutionary search

The application of neutrality is a straightforward tool to preserve population diversity since it allows the genotype (on the represented search space) to be changed without affecting the corresponding fitness. To implement neutrality the literature suggests representational redundancy (more to one correspondence in genotype–phenotype mapping) although using it as a source of neutrality researchers uniformly reported better or worse results. Instead of applying representational redundancy here the utilization of pseudo redundancy as the source of neutrality is proposed, that is, neutrality is achieved by simple objective-fitness transformation while pseudo redundancy (as another redundancy interpretation) denotes more to one correspondence between objective-fitness domains by objective-fitness mapping. The contribution of this work is specified by the dynamic generational gap model introduced for evolutionary algorithms which appears when elitist strategy is used under neutrality by pseudo redundancy. This paper investigates the influence of dynamic generational gap model on the performance of a micro-genetic algorithm framework applied to achieve least cost water pump control policy for an industrial size water network distribution system. The presented constrained mixed-integer optimization problem is originated from the regional water network of the city of Sopron (60,000 citizens) located in Hungary. Here, the goal is to obtain intra-day pump schedule which minimizes the cost required for operation while satisfies the system constraints (water reservoir level limitations, pump flow and delivery regulations, pump energy consumption limitations) and fulfills the water requirement by the users.     

Durability of high surface area platinum deposits on microelectrode arrays for acute neural recordings

The durability of high surface area platinum electrodes during acute intracerebral measurements was investigated. Electrode sites with extremely rough surfaces were realized using electrochemical deposition of platinum onto silicon-based microelectrode arrays from a lead-free platinizing solution. The close to 1000-fold increase in effective surface area lowered impedance, its absolute value at 1 kHz became about 7 and 18 % of the original Pt electrodes in vitro and in vivo, respectively. 24-channel probes were subjected to 12 recording sessions, during which they were implanted into the cerebrum of rats. Our results showed that although on the average the effective surface area of the platinized sites decreased, it remained more than two orders of magnitude higher than the average effective surface area of the original, sputtered thin-film platinum electrodes. Sites with electrochemical deposits proved to be superior, e.g. they provided less thermal and 50 Hz noise, even after 12 penetrations into the intact rat brain.