Capacitive microphone with a surface micromachined backplate usingelectroplating technology

A technology for surface micromachining of free-standing metal microstructures using metal electrodeposition on a sacrificial photoresist layer has been applied to a condenser microphone. Electroplating technology has been used to implement a suspended and perforated 15-μm-thick microstructure in copper, which serves as backplate electrode in the condenser microphone. The 1.8×1.8 mm ² large microphone diaphragm is in monocrystalline silicon and is fabricated with anisotropic etching of the substrate wafer. The realized prototypes have a measured sensitivity of 1.4 mV/Pa using a bias voltage of 28 V. The bandwidth is limited by an anti-resonance at 14 kHz which is due to the semi-rigid backplate. The resonance behavior of the backplate structure has been analyzed with finite element modeling with results in good agreement with measured data     

GUIDELINES FOR DESIGNING EIS INTERFACES Meeting Executives' Information Needs

For users of an executive information system (EIS), the EIS interface is the system and is crucial to the EIS's success. These guidelines for designing EIS interfaces are based on studies of actual EIS interfaces that meet the unique information needs of executives.     

ENHANCING THE CREATIVITY OF REENGINEERING Techniques for Making IS More Creative

Industries in the US continue to lose ground in international competition. If IS is to help change that trend, it will have to become more creative. Creativity improvement programs are being introduced in other areas of the company— now is the time for IS organizations to follow suit.     

First break refraction event picking using fuzzy logic systems

First break picking is a pattern recognition problem in seismic signal processing, one that requires much human effort and is difficult to automate. The authors' goal is to reduce the manual effort in the picking process and accurately perform the picking. Feedforward neural network first break pickers have been developed using backpropagation training algorithms applied either to an encoded version of the raw data or to derived seismic attributes which are extracted from the raw data. The authors summarize a study in which they applied a backpropagation fuzzy logic system (BPFLS) to first break picking. The authors use derived seismic attributes as features, and take lateral variations into account by using the distance to a piecewise linear guiding function as a new feature. Experimental results indicate that the BPFLS achieves about the same picking accuracy as a feedforward neural network that is also trained using a backpropagation algorithm; however, the BPFLS is trained in a much shorter time, because there is a systematic way in which the initial parameters of the BPFLS can be chosen, versus the random way in which the weights of the neural network are chosen     

Statistical synchronization among participants in real-time multimedia conferencing

In this paper, an algorithm to determine the set of packets generated continuously and periodically from different participants that are arriving at a node either for mixing at the master of a conference, or for simply playing back at a regular participant of a conference, is proposed. The essence of the algorithm is to estimate the expected packet arrival time (or reference time) for each participant. With the reference time at hand, the maximum jitter and the optimum waiting time for a mixer to wait packets from all participants can be determined. An enhancement to improve synchronization which deals with the estimation of the time offsets between the individual periods of the sources and the period of the receiver is also presented. The error of the proposed algorithm is enumerated by the Chernoff bound and demonstrated by simulation and is shown to be acceptable in practical application. The algorithm can also be employed when traffic sources operate with different periods.     

Robotica: a Mathematica package for robot analysis

Robotica is a computer aided design package for robotic manipulators developed in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It encapsulates over 30 functions into a Mathematica package allowing efficient symbolic and numeric calculation of kinematic and dynamic equations for multi-degree-of-freedom manipulators. An X-Windows front end that utilizes the interprocess communication features of Mathematica 2.1 has also been created for ease of use. This paper describes the most important features of the package and how they are used     

Components of random generation by normal subjects and patients with dysexecutive syndrome

The study presents a hypothesis on how randomness could be simulated by human subjects. Three sources of deviation from randomness are predicted: (1) the preferred application of overlearned production schemata for producing sequences of digits, (2) a wrong concept of randomness, and (3) the impossibility to monitor for redundancies of higher- than those of first-order. Deviations of random generation of digits produced by healthy subjects, patients with chronic frontal lobe damage, and patients with Parkinson's disease from random sequences produced by a computer program can be explained by the differential influence of these factors. Whereas incorrect concepts of randomness and limits on monitoring capacity distinguished all sequences produced by humans from actual random sequences, persistence on a single production strategy distinguished brain-damaged patients from controls. Random generation of digits appears to be a theoretically transparent and clinically useful test of executive function.     

A coverage plan for health centres in Murewa district in Zimbabwe: an example of action research

Good access to health facilities providing good first-level health care remains problematic in many developing countries. It is a hindrance to effective and efficient functioning of the hospital, as outpatient departments become overcrowded with patients from areas without health centres. In many cases the quality of care delivered to these patients is poor because within the district health system the hospital is not the best place for the supply of comprehensive, integrated and continuous care. Eventually, high hospital involvement in first-level care can jeopardize the delivery of adequate referral care for those patients who desperately need the hospital's technology and expertise. This paper provides an account of the way this problem was investigated and managed by the district health management team in the Murewa district in north-east Zimbabwe. The design of a comprehensive 'master plan' or 'coverage plan' is presented as well as the problems and difficulties encountered. The Murewa experience highlights the relevance of a coverage plan for rational and coherent health infrastructure planning at district level. The approach followed by the Murewa team illustrates the use of action research as an integral part of the management of district health systems.     

Insertional re-activation of a chloramphenicol acetyltransferase misfolding mutant protein

The deletion of nine residues from the C-terminus of the bacterialchloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) results in depositionof the mutant protein in cytoplasmic inclusion bodies and lossof chloramphenicol resistance in Escherichia coli. This foldingdefect is relieved by C-terminal fusion of the polypeptide withas few as two residues. Based on these observations, efficientpositive selection for the cloning of DNA fragments has beendemonstrated. The cloning vector encodes a C-terminally truncatedCAT protein. Restriction sites in front of the stop codon allowthe insertion of target DNA, resulting in the production ofproperly folded CAT fusion proteins and regained chloramphenicolresistance. The positive selection of recombinants is accomplishedby growth of transformants on chloramphenicol-containing agarplates. The method appears particularly convenient for the cloningof DNA fragments amplified by the PCR because minimal informationto restore CAT folding can be included in the primers. The cloningof random sequences shows that the folding defect can be relievedby fusion to a wide variety of peptides, providing great flexibilityto the positive selection system. This vector may also contributeto the determination of the role of the C-terminus in CAT folding.