Analysis and simulation of substrate coupling in integrated circuits

A technique is presented which allows efficient calculation of substrate-coupling macromodels in integrated circuits. the technique can be used to calculate node-to-node resistances or impedances in substrate models. Examples of the technique applied to several test structures are presented.     

Cervid Prion Protein Polymorphisms: Role in Chronic Wasting Disease Pathogenesis

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease found in both free-ranging and farmed cervids. Susceptibility of these animals to CWD is governed by various exogenous and endogenous factors. Past studies have demonstrated that polymorphisms within the prion protein (PrP) sequence itself affect an animal’s susceptibility to CWD. PrP polymorphisms can modulate CWD pathogenesis in two ways: the ability of the endogenous prion protein (PrP^C) to convert into infectious prions (PrP^Sc) or it can give rise to novel prion strains. In vivo studies in susceptible cervids, complemented by studies in transgenic mice expressing the corresponding cervid PrP sequence, show that each polymorphism has distinct effects on both PrP^C and PrP^Sc. It is not entirely clear how these polymorphisms are responsible for these effects, but in vitro studies suggest they play a role in modifying PrP epitopes crucial for PrP^C to PrP^Sc conversion and determining PrP^C stability. PrP polymorphisms are unique to one or two cervid species and most confer a certain degree of reduced susceptibility to CWD. However, to date, there are no reports of polymorphic cervid PrP alleles providing absolute resistance to CWD. Studies on polymorphisms have focused on those found in CWD-endemic areas, with the hope that understanding the role of an animal’s genetics in CWD can help to predict, contain, or prevent transmission of CWD.     

Morphology of EVA based nanocomposites under shear and extensional flow

Shear and extensional rheological measurements were conducted in conjunction with laser light scattering (LLS) on ethylene‐vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) nanocomposites. The materials were prepared by melt‐mixing EVA and commercially acquired layered silicates. Wide Angle X‐Ray Scattering (WAXS) was used to ascertain the degree of layer swelling. This could be attributed to the intercalation of polymer chains into the interlayer of the silicates. The nanocomposites prepared were determined to be predominantly intercalated in nature. In shear rheological tests, the nanocomposites exhibited an increase in viscoelastic properties compared to the pure EVA. The extent of this property enhancement was not as pronounced as had been reported in many instances with respect to other polymer nanocomposites. This could be attributed to the absence of a network structure normally observed in an exfoliated system. The extensional rheological tests showed an increase in extensional flow properties. This was confirmed by the LLS, which indicated that the filled systems had higher deformability than the unfilled one. Polym. Eng. Sci. 44:1220–1230, 2004. © 2004 Society of Plastics Engineers.     

Design and implementation of a block‐backstepping based tracking control for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot

This paper presents formulation of a novel block‐backstepping based control algorithm to overcome the challenges posed by the tracking and the stabilization problem for a differential drive wheeled mobile robot (WMR). At first, a two‐dimensional output vector for the WMR has been defined in such a manner that it would decouple the two control inputs and, thereby, allow the designer to formulate the control laws for the two inputs one at a time. Actually, the decoupling has been carried out in a way to convert the system into block‐strict feedback form. Thereafter, block‐backstepping control algorithm has been utilized to derive the expressions of the control inputs for the WMR system. The proposed block‐backstepping technique has further been enriched by incorporating an integral action for enhancing the steady state performance of the overall system. Global asymptotic stability of the overall system has been analyzed using Lyapunov stability criteria. Finally, the proposed control algorithm has been implemented on a laboratory scale differential drive WMR to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control law in real‐time environment. Indeed, the proposed design approach is novel in the sense that it has judiciously exploited the nonholonomic constraint of the WMR to result in a reduced order block‐backstepping controller for the WMR, and thereby, it has eventually yielded a compact expression of the control law that is amenable to real‐time implementation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neutrosophic classifier: An extension of fuzzy classifer

Fuzzy classification has become of great interest because of its ability to utilize simple linguistically interpretable rules and has overcome the limitations of symbolic or crisp rule based classifiers. This paper introduces an extension to fuzzy classifier: a neutrosophic classifier, which would utilize neutrosophic logic for its working. Neutrosophic logic is a generalized logic that is capable of effectively handling indeterminacy, stochasticity acquisition errors that fuzzy logic cannot handle. The proposed neutrosophic classifier employs neutrosophic logic for its working and is an extension of commonly used fuzzy classifier. It is compared with the commonly used fuzzy classifiers on the following parameters: nature of membership functions, number of rules and indeterminacy in the results generated. It is proved in the paper that extended fuzzy classifier: neutrosophic classifier; optimizes the said parameters in comparison to the fuzzy counterpart. Finally the paper is concluded with justifying that neutrosophic logic though in its nascent stage still holds the potential to be experimented for further exploration in different domains.     

Auto-generation of IEC standard PLC code using t-MPSG

The objective of this paper is to reduce the development time of a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) by automating the task of code generation. For this purpose, we applied t-MPSG (Timed-Message Based Part State Graph). The t-MPSG is an extended finite state automata used to model and generate an execution module for a real-time shop floor controller system. In our proposed method, t-MPSG is used to model the formal specification of the controller system that can be translated into textual structure. After the verification of the t-MPSG model, it can be used as an input to the plc-builder tool. The plc-builder tool is an extended version of a conventional MPSG simulator. It can be used to translate the textual structure of the t-MPSG into an IEC standard PLC code. Finally, the generated code can be downloaded to a PLC emulator or a PLC device for the purpose of simulation and execution. The similarity in the hierarchical structure of the t-MPSG and the IEC standard PLC program has made it convenient to transform from one form to another. Furthermore, an illustration of the methodology to auto-generate IEC standard PLC code using t-MPSG is explained with a suitable example. Recommended by Editorial Board member Young Soo Suh under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi. This work was partially supported by Defense Acquisition Program Administration and Agency for Defense Development under the contract (UD080042AD). Devinder Thapa is a Postdoc Research Fellow in the Department of Industrial & information systems at Ajou University, Korea. He completed his Ph.D. from Ajou University in Industrial and Information Systems Engineering. His area of research is related to manufacturing automation and intelligent decision support systems. Chang Mok Park is a Professor in the Department of Technology & Systems Management at Induk Institute of Technology. He completed his Ph.D. in 2002 from Ajou University in Industrial Engineering. His research interest is related to manufacturing optimization, discrete event system simulation and signal analysis. Sang C. Park is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial & Information Systems Engineering at Ajou University. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from KAIST in 1994, 1996, and 2000, respectively, all in Industrial Engineering. His research interests include geometric algorithms in CAD/CAM, process planning, engineering knowledge management, and discrete event system simulation. Gi-Nam Wang is the Head and a Professor in the Department of Industrial & Information Systems Engineering at Ajou University, Korea. He completed his Ph.D. in 1992 from Texas A&M University, in Industrial Engineering. He has worked as Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Austin during 2000–2001. His area of research is related to Intelligent Information & manufacturing systems, system integration & automation, e-Business solutions and image processing.     

A Workflow Scheduling Method for Cloud Computing Platform

Wireless Personal Communications - Scheduling in computing environments such as homogeneous and heterogonous is very challenging and faces various difficulties computationally. This computing needs...     

Urban growth modeling of Kathmandu metropolitan region, Nepal

The complexity of urban system requires integrated tools and techniques to understand the spatial process of urban development and project the future scenarios. This research aims to simulate urban growth patterns in Kathmandu metropolitan region in Nepal. The region, surrounded by complex mountainous terrain, has very limited land resources for new developments. As similar to many cities of the developing world, it has been facing rapid population growth and daunting environmental problems. Three time series land use maps in a fine-scale (30 m resolution), derived from satellite remote sensing, for the last three decades of the 20th century were used to clarify the spatial process of urbanization. Based on the historical experiences of the land use transitions, we adopted weight of evidence method integrated in cellular automata framework for predicting the future spatial patterns of urban growth. We extrapolated urban development patterns to 2010 and 2020 under the current scenario across the metropolitan region. Depending on local characteristics and land cover transition rates, this model produced noticeable spatial pattern of changes in the region. Based on the extrapolated spatial patterns, the urban development in the Kathmandu valley will continue through both in-filling in existing urban areas and outward rapid expansion toward the east and south directions. Overall development will be greatly affected by the existing urban space, transportation network, and topographic complexity.     

Extended tuning of an injection-locked diode laser

We have investigated the application of an electronic feedback technique recently reported by Repasky et al. [Appl. Opt. 45, 9013 (2006)] to an injection-locked semiconductor diode laser. We find that without electronic feedback, the injection-locked slave laser will only follow the master for less than 1 GHz, but once the electronic feedback is applied, the slave laser is capable of following for more than 20 GHz, corresponding to the full scan range of the master laser.