Adaptive viewpoints for co-browsing on heterogeneous devices

Co-browsing is an activity in which a group of users navigate their way through of a set of Web pages together for a shared purpose. Effective co-browsing among users with different device capabilities requires a shared understanding of those Web pages. This paper demonstrates the concept of shared viewpoints (SVPs), and personal viewpoints (PVPs), for co-browsing, before detailing a framework for implementing these concepts. Finally, the effectiveness of the framework is presented through a perceptual experiment.     

InP D-HBT ICs for 40-Gb/s and higher bitrate lightwave transceivers

The combination of device speed (f/sub T/, f/sub max/ > 150 GHz) and breakdown voltage (V/sub bceo/ > 8 V) makes the double heterojunction bipolar InP-based transistor (D-HBT) an attractive technology to implement the most demanding analog functions of 40-Gb/s transceivers. This is illustrated by the performance of a number of analog circuits realized in an InP D-HBT technology with an 1.2- or 1.6-/spl mu/m-wide emitter finger: a low phase noise push-push voltage-controlled oscillator with -7-dBm output power at 146 GHz, a 40-GHz bandwidth and low-jitter 40-Gb/s limiting amplifier, a lumped 40-Gb/s limiting driver amplifier with 4.5-V/sub pp/ differential output swing, a distributed 40-Gb/s driver amplifier with 6-V/sub pp/ differential output swing, and a number of distributed preamplifiers with up to 1.3-THz gain-bandwidth product.     

New encapsulation development for fine pitch IC devices

The continuous reduction of chip size driven by the market demand has a significant impact on circuit design and assembly process of IC packages. Shrinking chip size and increasing I/O counts require finer bond pad pitch and bond pad size for circuitry layout. As a result, serious wire deflection during transfer molding process could make adjacent wires short, and this issue becomes more critical as a smaller wire diameter has to be applied for the finer pitch wire bonded IC devices.This paper presents a new encapsulation process development for 50 μm fine pitch plastic ball grid array package. Since reduced wire diameter decreases the bending strength of bonded wires significantly, wire deflection during molding process becomes quite serious and critical. Experiments on conventional transfer molding were conducted to evaluate wire span threshold with 23.0 μm diameter gold wire. The results show that the wire span threshold is about 4.1 mm, which is much shorter than the wire span threshold of over 5.0 mm for wire with 25.4 μm diameter. Finite element analysis shows there is a significant difference in the wire deflection between 23.0 μm gold wire and 25.4 μm gold wire diameter under the same action of mold flow. A novel encapsulation method is introduced using non-sweep solution. The wire span could be extended to over 5.0 mm with wire sweep less than 1%. Reliability tests conducted showed that all the units passed 1000 temperature cycles (−55 to 125 °C) with JEDEC moisture sensitivity level 2a (60 °C/60% relative humidity for 120 h) and 3 times reflow (peak temperature at 220–225 °C). It is believed that this solution could efficiently overcome the risk of wire short issues and improve the yield of ultra fine pitch wire bonds in high-volume production.     

The sleeping dragon: Wind energy in the Asia-Pacific region

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the fastest growing regional economies in the world today. The region is home to over half of the global population and is one of the most important markets for multinational corporations to penetrate. The wind power sector is no exception. Wind resources remain untapped and the demand for electricity continues to grow as a result of expanding and modernizing economies. Godfrey Chua, Emerging Energy Research USA reports on the current status and development of the wind industry in the region.     

The glass fibre-polymer interface: II—Work of fracture and shear stresses

Pull-out experiments have been carried out on single production fibres under carefully controlled conditions. Four parameters were determined. The interfacial yield stresses, of about 9–14 MPa, were very much smaller than the shear strengths of the bulk polymers in the case of an epoxy, whether post-cured or not, and a non-post-cured polyester. Values for the work of fracture of the interface varied from 140 to 300 Jm^?2, and again were less than those of the polymer. Interface failure sometimes took place in the epoxy rather than at the fibre surface, whereas with the polyester it always took place at the fibre surface. After interface failure, pull-out was governed by friction, with maximum shear stresses of 7–10 MPa for polyester, and 21–34 MPa for epoxy, the higher values being obtained for the post-cured resins. Average frictional shear stresses were sometimes less than a half of the maximum shear stress, indicating that the fibre Poisson's shrinkage was playing an important role in the pull-out process. A silicone release agent reduced the frictional shear stresses to 2·5 MPa, with both resins.     

Predation of livestock ticks by chickens as a tick-control method in a resource-poor urban environment

The increasing prevalence of streptococci as causes of potentially fatal nosocomial bacteremia requires that antimicrobial agents used for empiric therapy in hospitalized patients include both pneumococci and viridans group streptococci as well as beta-hemolytic streptococci in their activity profile. In this study, the in vitro activity of cefepime, a new fourth-generation cephalosporin, was compared with other cephalosporins versus 197 nosocomial blood stream isolates of streptococci (20 Streptococcus pneumoniae, 104 viridans group, and 73 beta-hemolytic) isolated from patients at more than 30 medial centers from 1995 to 1997. Additional agents tested included penicillin, erythromycin, and vancomycin. Overall, cefepime inhibited 83% of the isolates at concentrations < or = 0.5 microgram/mL and 100% at < or = 8 micrograms/mL. By comparison, ceftazidime inhibited 35 and 88% of isolates at the same concentrations. Cefepime was approximately eightfold more potent than ceftazidime against S. pneumoniae, viridans group streptococci, and beta-hemolytic streptococci. Among the 42 isolates with penicillin MICs > 0.12 microgram/mL, 100% were inhibited by cefepime and only 48% by ceftazidime at < or = 8 micrograms/mL. The rank order of activity for all six agents against the 197 isolates was vancomycin > ceftriaxone > cefepime > penicillin > erythromycin > ceftazidime. Based on the results of the present study, cefepime and ceftriaxone were the superior cephalosporins in potency and spectrum for empiric coverage of patients at risk for streptococcal blood stream infections.     

The maximum bit rates of soliton communication systems with lumpedamplifiers and filters in different distances

The maximum bit rate of a soliton communication system with lumped amplifiers and optical filters is considered. When the dispersion of the fiber varies from one amplifier spacing to another amplifier spacing, the maximum bit rate is significantly reduced. To overcome the effect, the amplitude of the soliton is amplified so that it is still the average soliton corresponding to the fiber dispersion for an amplifier spacing. Thus, the maximum bit rate is only slightly less than that without the dispersion variations. For a given distance, the maximum bit rate limited by the stability and soliton interaction is obtained. The result is compared with that limited by the Gordon-Haus effect. For shorter transmission distance, the maximum bit rate is limited by the stability and soliton interaction. For longer transmission distance, the maximum bit rate is limited by the Gordon-Haus effect     

Transformations for nonideal uniform circular arrays operating in correlated signal environments

The Davies transformation is a method to transform the steering vector of a uniform circular array (UCA) to one with Vandermonde form. As such, it allows techniques such as spatial smoothing for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in a correlated signal environment, developed originally for uniform linear arrays, to be applied to UCAs. However, the Davies transformation can be highly sensitive to perturbations of the underlying array model. This paper presents a method for deriving a more robust transformation using optimization techniques. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated through a number of DOA estimation examples.     

Considerations for polarization insensitive optical switching and modulation using strained InGaAs/InAlAs quantum well structure

It is shown that In/sub 1-x/Ga/sub x/As/In/sub 0.52/Al/sub 0.48/As MQW structures with the wells under tensile strain obtained by the appropriate selection of the Ga mole fraction and well size can achieve polarization-insensitive optical switching and modulation for a wide range of wavelengths between 1.0 and 1.6 mu m. For example, a change in refractive index of -0.5% at about 1.55 mu m will facilitate an intersectional angle of more than 10 degrees in a total internal reflection switch which can be readily fabricated. Hence, this material system is promising for long-wavelength polarization-insensitive semiconductor optoelectronic devices.<>     

Signal processing using cellular neural networks

The cellular neural network (CNN) architecture combines the best features from traditional fully-connected analog neural networks and digital cellular automata. The network can rapidly process continuous-valued (gray-scale) input signals (such as images) and perform many computation functions which traditionally were implemented in digital form. Here, we briefly introduce the the theory of CNN circuits, provide some examples of CNN applications to image processing, and discuss work toward a CNN implementation in custom CMOS VLSI. The role of analog computer-aided design (CAD) will be briefly presented as it relates to analog neural network implementation.This work is supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-89-J1402, and the National Science Foundation under grant MIP-8912639.