Finite Element Dynamic Analysis of Laminated Viscoelastic Structures

This work is concerned with the dynamic behavior of laminated beam, plate and shell structures consisting of a viscoelastic damping layer constrained between two structural layers. Finite element models for modal, harmonic and transient analyses are developed. The dynamic interlaminar shear stresses are determined and presented under harmonic and transient loads. The effect of the damping ratio of the viscoelastic material is investigated. It is found that the viscoelastic material damping reduces the interlaminar stresses. The results also show the dependency of the viscoelastic material on frequency, hence, the effect of the viscoelastic material appears significantly under harmonic loading. In transient analysis, the importance of the viscoelastic material is observed in absorbing the impact and returning the structure to its original configuration.     

A trust model for popular smart home devices

International Journal of Information Security - Nowadays, smart home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home have reached mainstream popularity. Being in the homes of users, these devices are...     

Application of Machine Learning for Online Reputation Systems

Machine Intelligence Research - Users on the Internet usually require venues to provide better purchasing recommendations. This can be provided by a reputation system that processes ratings to...     

A hierarchical pipelining architecture and FPGA implementation for lifting-based 2-D DWT

Numerous VLSI architectures for 2-D discrete wavelet transform (DWT) have been brought forward. While most of the designs displayed good performance through parallel processing, few of them addressed thoroughly how to sustain such high throughput computing which is crucial in real-time applications. Although the affordable data transfer bandwidth has been increased tremendously during the past decade, the pressure on data communication has not yet been relieved from stream-intensive applications. The design of 2-D DWT belongs to such cases. In this paper, we expose the performance gap between the computing core and the entire system, distinguishing them by quantitative approach with metrics of peak performance and mean-time performance. In order to narrow down the discrepancy without degrading either of the two criteria, on the one hand, we introduce a software-pipelining lifting-based computing kernel to remove data dependence for peak performance, on the other hand, we apply loop fusing technique and a hierarchical pipelining method to enhance data locality and boost the mean-time performance. The architecture has been implemented in Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA, taking advantage of Virtex-II’s embedded multipliers and block RAMs. We use Daubechies (9, 7) and LeGall (5, 3) filters (the default lossy and lossless filters in JPEG2000) for illustration whereas it is a general method for other DWT filters. The post-place and routing operation frequency for Daubechies (9, 7) is 138 MHz. Notably, the mean-time performance parameterized by image size and decomposition level achieves closely to peak performance.

---

Musculoskeletal disorders in labor-intensive agriculture

This paper gives an overview of the extent of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in agriculture, and a historical perspective on how ergonomics has been used to reduce the health effects of labor-intensive agriculture. A summary of exposure to MSD physical risk factors within various classes of crops, along with various administrative and engineering controls for abating MSDs in agriculture is given. These controls range from programmed rest breaks to mechanized or partially-mechanized operations. Worker-based approaches such as prone carts and platforms, and load transfer devices hold promise in combating the prevalent stooped work in agriculture. Including the worker as an integral contributor to all aspects of developing and implementing an intervention, and considering the psychosocial and socio-cultural aspects of the work environment are crucial elements of effective interventions for reducing MSDs. Despite the advent progress in new technologies in agricultural practices, reliance on labor, especially in fresh market fruits and vegetables, will always be a major cornerstone of agriculture for at least the foreseen future. It is encouraging to see the increased interest among health and safety professionals, epidemiologists, engineers, social scientists, and ergonomists throughout the world who are committed to the plight of reducing MSDs and other health problems among agricultural workers.     

Analytical modeling of a multi-queue nodes network router

This paper presents the derivation of an analytical model for a multi-queue nodes network router, which is referred to as the multi-queue nodes (mQN) model. In this model, expressions are derived to calculate two performance metrics, namely, the queue node and system utilization factors. In order to demonstrate the flexibility and effectiveness of the mQN model in analyzing the performance of an mQN network router, two scenarios are performed. These scenarios investigated the variation of queue nodes and system utilization factors against queue nodes dropping probability for various system sizes and packets arrival routing probabilities. The performed scenarios demonstrated that the mQN analytical model is more flexible and effective when compared with experimental tests and computer simulations in assessing the performance of an mQN network router.     

Clinical Phenotype of PDE6B-Associated Retinitis Pigmentosa

In this retrospective, longitudinal, observational cohort study, we investigated the phenotypic and genotypic features of retinitis pigmentosa associated with variants in the PDE6B gene. Patients underwent clinical examination and genetic testing at a single tertiary referral center, including best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), kinetic visual field (VF), full-field electroretinography, full-field stimulus threshold, spectral domain optical coherence tomography, and fundus autofluorescence imaging. The genetic testing comprised candidate gene sequencing, inherited retinal disease gene panel sequencing, whole-genome sequencing, and testing for familial variants by Sanger sequencing. Twenty-four patients with mutations in PDE6B from 21 families were included in the study (mean age at the first visit: 32.1 ± 13.5 years). The majority of variants were putative splicing defects (8/23) and missense (7/23) mutations. Seventy-nine percent (38/48) of eyes had no visual acuity impairment at the first visit. Visual acuity impairment was mild in 4% (2/48), moderate in 13% (6/48), and severe in 4% (2/48). BCVA was symmetrical in the right and left eyes. The kinetic VF measurements were highly symmetrical in the right and left eyes, as was the horizontal ellipsoid zone (EZ) width. Regarding the genetic findings, 43% of the PDE6B variants found in our patients were novel. Thus, this study contributed substantially to the PDE6B mutation spectrum. The visual acuity impairment was mild in 83% of eyes, providing a window of opportunity for investigational new drugs. The EZ width was reduced in all patients and was highly symmetric between the eyes, making it a promising outcome measure. We expect these findings to have implications on the design of future PDE6B-related retinitis pigmentosa (RP) clinical trials.     

Hybrid pyramid-DWT-SVD dual data hiding technique for videos ownership protection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This paper proposes a hybrid pyramid Discrete-Wavelet-Transform (DWT) Singular-Value-Decomposition (SVD) data hiding scheme for video authentication and...     

Performance and scalability analysis of image processing applications on the IBM Cell BE simulator

The IBM Cell Broadband Engine （BE） simulator simulates parallel execution of programs on a state-of-the-art 9-core Cell processor model. In this paper, we report our experience with implementing, simulation, and analyzing the performance of image processing applications on the IBM Cell Broadband Engine Simulator measured on the IBM Cell We report the performance simulator for PPE-only and embedded applications, and with various input data file sizes or numbers of SPEs enabled. The simulator results indicate that Cell BE processor can outperform modern single-core RISC processors in orders of magnitude on SIMD compute intensive applications such as edge detection. We also explore different features and development processes available on the simulator. Different techniques for obtaining accurate results （close to real hardware result） are also explored.     

Evaluation of an appearance-based 3D face tracker using dense 3D data

The ability to detect and track human heads and faces in video sequences can be considered as the finest level of any video surveillance system. In this paper, we introduce a general framework for evaluating our recent appearance-based 3D face tracker using dense 3D data. This tracker combines online appearance models with an image registration technique and can run in real-time and is drift insensitive. More precisely, accuracy and usability of this developed tracker are assessed using stereo-based range facial data from which ground truth 3D motions are computed. This evaluation quantifies the monocular tracker accuracy, and identifies its working range in 3D space. Additionally, this evaluation gives some hints on how the tracker can be fully exploited.