Engineering Commons^™

Detection, Identification And Classification Of Suck, Swallow And Breathing Activity In Premature Infants During Bottle-Feeding, Fedra Adnani

Theses and Dissertations

Prematurity, especially if extreme, is one of the leading causes of problems and/or death after delivery. Among all the problems encountered by premature infants, feeding difficulties are very common. Many premature infants are fed intravenously at first, and they progress to milk feedings provided by a tube passed into the stomach. At around 34 weeks of gestation, premature infants should be able to breastfeed or take a bottle. At the same time such premature infants are usually faced with difficulty making the transition from tube-feeding to full oral feeding. In this study three physiological measurements of premature infants including sucking, …

Experimental Study Of The Entrainment Of Nanoparticles From Surfaces, Srirupa Ganguly

Theses and Dissertations

The adhesion and resuspension of nanoparticles is important in applications ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to pollution management. The objective of this work is to understand the effect of particle size on re-entrainment of nanometer scale particles. One of the major contributions is to reduce the randomness introduced in past measurements on resuspension by controlling humidity, temperature, material and the distribution of shape and particle sizes. In the process of studying particle size, the effect of surface roughness was also found. Measurements of the detachment fraction of carbon particles as a function of flow rate show three distinct regimes that we …

Optical Characterization Of Electrochemically Self-Assembled Compound Semiconductor Nanowires, Sivakumar Ramanathan

Theses and Dissertations

Semiconductor nanowires have attracted considerable attention as possible source for lasers and optical storage media. We report the fabrication and optical characterization of ZnO and CdS nanowires. The former are produced by electrochemical deposition of Zn inside nanoporous alumina films containing regimented arrays of 10nm, 25nm and 50 nm diameter pores, followed by room temperature chemical oxidization. Fluorescence spectroscopy shows different characteristics associated with different sample diameter. The 50 nm ZnO nanowires show an exciton recombination peak and an additional peak related to the deep trap levels. 25 nm ZnO nanowires show a only the exciton recombination peak, which is …

Computational Modeling To Predict Mechanical Function Of Joints: Validations And Applications Of Lower Leg Simulations, Peter C. Liacouras

Theses and Dissertations

Computational models of musculoskeletal joints and limbs can provide useful information about joint mechanics. Validated models can be used as a predictive device for understanding joint function and serve as a clinical tool for predicting the outcome of surgical procedures. A new computational modeling approach was developed for simulating joint kinematics that are dictated by bone/joint anatomy, ligamentous constraints, and applied loading.Three-dimensional computational models of the lower leg were created. Model development involved generating three-dimensional surfaces from CT images, followed by importing these surfaces into SolidWorks and COSMOSMotion. ThroughSolidWorks and COSMOSMotion, each bone surface was created into a solid object …

Design And Development Of Oligonucleotide Microarrays And Their Application In Diagnostic And Prognostic Estimation Of Human Gliomas, G. Scott Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

DNA microarrays represent an ultra-high throughput gene expression assay employed to study the transcriptomic profiles of biological tissues. These devices are increasingly being used to study many aspects of gene regulation, and there is growing interest in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for developing such devices in efforts toward rational product/drug design. The DNA microarray also provides a unique and objective means for diagnosis and prognosis of human diseases based on patterns of gene expression. This is especially important in cancer research and the thrust toward personalized medicine. This dissertation details the design and development of oligonucleotide microarrays and the …

A Wireless Surface Electromyography (Wsemg) System, Aleeta E. Bell

Theses and Dissertations

Surface Electromyography (SEMG) systems are utilized throughout the medical industry to study abnormal electrical activity of the human muscle. Historically, SEMG systems employ surface (skin) mounted sensors that transmit electrical muscle data to a computer base via an umbilical cord. A typical SEMG analysis may exercise multiple sensors, each representing a unique data channel, positioned about the patient's body. Data transmission cables are linked between the surface mounted sensor nodes and a backpack worn by the patient. As the number of sensors increases, the patient's freedom of mobility decreases due to the lengthy data cables linked between the surface sensors …

Real-Time Memory Management: Life And Times, Andrew Borg, Andy Wellings, Christopher Gill, Ron K. Cytron

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

As high integrity real-time systems become increasingly large and complex, forcing a static model of memory usage becomes untenable. The challenge is to provide a dynamic memory model that guarantees tight and bounded time and space requirements without overburdening the developer with memory concerns. This paper provides an analysis of memory management approaches in order to characterise the tradeoffs across three semantic domains: space, time and a characterisation of memory usage information such as the lifetime of objects. A unified approach to distinguishing the merits of each memory model highlights the relationship across these three domains, thereby identifying the class …

Supporting Collaborative Behavior In Manets Using Workflows, Rohan Sen, Gregory Hackmann, Mart Haitjema, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Groupware activities provide a powerful representation for many collaborative tasks. Today, the technologies that support typical groupware applications often assume a stable wired network infrastructure. The potential for collaboration in scenarios that lack this fixed infrastructure remains largely untapped. Such scenarios include activities on construction sites, wilderness exploration, disaster recovery, and rapid intervention teams. Communication in these scenarios can be supported using wireless ad hoc networks, an emerging technology whose full potential is yet to be understood and realized. In this paper, we consider the fundamental technical issues that need to be addressed in order to introduce groupware concepts into …

Three Dimensional Panoramic Fast Flourescence Imaging Of Cardiac Arryhtymias In The Rabbit Heart, Fujian Qu, Vladimir P. Nikolski, Cindy Grimm, Igor R. Efimov

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Cardiac high spatio-temporal optical mapping provides a unique opportunity to investigate the dynamics of propagating waves of excitation during ventricular arrhythmia and defibrillation. However, studies using single camera imaging systems are hampered by the inability to monitor electrical activity from the entire surface of the heart. We have developed a three dimensional panoramic imaging system which allows high-resolution and high-dynamic-range optical mapping from the entire surface of the heart. Rabbit hearts (n=4) were Langendorff perfused and imaged by the system during sinus rhythm, epicardial pacing, and arrhythmias. The reconstructed 3D electrical activity provides us with a powerful tool to investigate …

Discovering Weak Community Structures In Large Biological Networks , Jianhua Ruan, Weixiong Zhang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Identifying intrinsic structures in large networks is a fundamental problem in many fields, such as biology, engineering and social sciences. Motivated by biology applications, in this paper we are concerned with identifying community structures, which are densely connected sub-graphs, in large biological networks. We address several critical issues for finding community structures. First, biological networks directly constructed from experimental data often contain spurious edges and may also miss genuine connections. As a result, community structures in biological networks are often weak. We introduce simple operations to capture local neighborhood structures for identifying weak communities. Second, we consider the issue of …

Automatic Application-Specific Customization Of Softcore Processor Microarchitecture, Masters Thesis, May 2006, Shobana Padmanabhan

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Applications for constrained embedded systems are subject to strict runtime and resource utilization bounds. With soft core processors, application developers can customize the processor for their application, constrained by available hardware resources but aimed at high application performance. The more reconfigurable the processor is, the more options the application developers will have for customization and hence increased potential for improving application performance. However, such customization entails developing in-depth familiarity with all the parameters, in order to configure them effectively. This is typically infeasible, given the tight time-to-market pressure on the developers. Alternatively, developers could explore all possible configurations, but being …

Manifold Learning For Natural Image Sets, Doctoral Dissertation August 2006, Richard Souvenir

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The field of manifold learning provides powerful tools for parameterizing high-dimensional data points with a small number of parameters when this data lies on or near some manifold. Images can be thought of as points in some high-dimensional image space where each coordinate represents the intensity value of a single pixel. These manifold learning techniques have been successfully applied to simple image sets, such as handwriting data and a statue in a tightly controlled environment. However, they fail in the case of natural image sets, even those that only vary due to a single degree of freedom, such as a …

Design Issues Of Reserved Delivery Subnetworks, Doctoral Dissertation, May 2006, Ruibiao Qiu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The lack of per-flow bandwidth reservation in today's Internet limits the quality of service that an information service provider can provide. This dissertation introduces the reserved delivery subnetwork (RDS), a mechanism that provides consistent quality of service by implementing aggregate bandwidth reservation. A number of design and deployment issues of RDSs are studied. First, the configuration problem of a single-server RDS is formulated as a minimum concave cost network flow problem, which properly reflects the economy of bandwidth aggregation, but is also an NP-hard problem. To make the RDS configuration problem tractable, an efficient approximation heuristic, largest demands first (LDF), …

A Theory Of Load Adjustments And Its Implications For Congestion Control, Sergey Gorinsky, Manfred Georg, Maxim Podlesny, Christoph Jechlitschek

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Multiplicative Increase (MI), Additive Increase (AI), and Multiplicative Decrease (MD) are linear adjustments used extensively in networking. However, their properties are not fully understood. We analyze responsiveness (time for the total load to reach the target load), smoothness (maximal size of the total load oscillations after reaching the target load), fairing speed (speed of convergence to equal individual loads) and scalabilities of MAIMD algorithms, which generalize AIMD algorithms via optional inclusion of MI. We prove that an MAIMD can provide faster asymptotic fairing than a less smooth AIMD. Furthermore, we discover that loads under a specific MAIMD converge from any …

Perceptually Meaningful Image Editing: Depth, Reynold J. Bailey, Cindy Grimm

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We introduce the concept of perceptually meaningful image editing and present two techniques for manipulating the apparent depth of objects in an image. The user loads an image, selects an object and specifies whether the object should appear closer or further away. The system automatically determines target values for the object and/or background that achieve the desired depth change. These depth editing operations, based on techniques used by traditional artists, manipulate either the luminance or color temperature of different regions of the image. By performing blending in the gradient domain and reconstruction with a Poisson solver, the appearance of false …

Towards A Unified Radio Power Management Architecture For Wireless Sensor Networks, Kevin Klues, Guoliang Xing, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

In many wireless sensor networks, energy is an extremely limited resource. While many different power management strategies have been proposed to help reduce the amount of energy wasted, application developers still face two fundamental challenges when developing systems with stringent power constraints. First, existing power management strategies are usually tightly coupled with network protocols and other system functionality. This monolithic approach has led to standalone solutions that cannot easily be reused or extended to other applications or platforms. Second, different power management strategies make different and sometimes even conflicting assumptions about the rest of the system with which they need …

Design And Evaluation Of A Blast Ungapped Extension Accelerator, Master's Thesis, Joseph M. Lancaster

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The amount of biosequence data being produced each year is growing exponentially. Extracting useful information from this massive amount of data is becoming an increasingly difficult task. This thesis focuses on accelerating the most widely-used software tool for analyzing genomic data, BLAST. This thesis presents Mercury BLAST, a novel method for accelerating searches through massive DNA databases. Mercury BLAST takes a streaming approach to the BLAST computation by offloading the performance-critical sections onto reconfigurable hardware. This hardware is then used in combination with the processor of the host system to deliver BLAST results in a fraction of the time of …

A View-Based Deformation Tool-Kit, Master's Thesis, August 2006, Nisha Sudarsanam

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Camera manipulation is a hard problem since a graphics camera is defined by specifying 11 independent parameters. Manipulating such a high-dimensional space to accomplish specific tasks is difficult and requires a certain amount of expertise. We present an intuitive interface that allows novice users to perform camera operations in terms of the change they want see in the image. In addition to developing a natural means for camera interaction, our system also includes a novel interface for viewing and organizing previously saved views. When exploring complex 3D data-sets a single view is not sufficient. Instead, a composite view built from …

Dynamic Conflict-Free Query Scheduling For Wireless Sensor Networks, Octav Chipara, Chenyang Lu, John Stankovic

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

With the emergence of high data rate sensor network applications, there is an increasing demand for high-performance query services in such networks. To meet this challenge, we present Dynamic Conflict-free Query Scheduling (DCQS), a novel scheduling technique for queries in wireless sensor networks. In contrast to earlier TDMA protocols designed for general-purpose networks and workloads, DCQS is specifically designed for query services supporting in-network data aggregation. DCQS has several important features. First, it optimizes the query performance and energy efficiency by exploiting the temporal properties and precedence constraints introduced by data aggregation. Second, it can efficiently adapt to dynamic workloads …

Activepdf-Toolk, Washington University In St. Louis Computer Science Engineering Department

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This document provides information for deploying activePDF Toolkit Professional in a development environment. This document is organized into four sections: Getting Started, Tutorials, Technical Reference and the Toolkit Appendices. The Getting Started section covers setup and installation, includes a product overview and information related to operating Toolkit Professional. Tutorials includes examples of many Toolkit features, including PDF generation and form filling. All of the tutorials can be used with activePDF Toolkit. Technical Reference provides detailed information on Toolkit’s objects, subobjects, methods and properties.

Visualization For Analyzing Trajectory-Based Metaheuristic Search Algorithms, Steven Halim, Roland H. C. Yap, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

Developing A New Program In Marine Engineering Technology, Anthony Dean, Gary Crossman, Alok Verma

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The Department of Engineering Technology, in the Batten College of Engineering and Technology at Old Dominion University, in conjunction with members of its advisory board and other industry representatives have begun a sustained effort to promote and develop a strong course of study in Marine Engineering Technology. Located in Norfolk, Virginia, Old Dominion University, and particularly the Department of Engineering Technology, is uniquely positioned to develop such a program. With strong ties to the world's largest Naval Base and superlative shipbuilding, maintenance and repair facilities, early qualitative research indicated high interest for development of such a program in support of …

A New Approach In Microprocessor/Microcontroller Courses/Laboratories Material Design And Development, Steve C. Hsiung, Jeff Willis

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Courses in microprocessors and microcontrollers are standard parts of the Engineering Technology core curricula. The traditional course material developments include both lectures and associated laboratory exercises. No matter how creative is the curriculum; it is usually budgetary constraints that confine the creativity when developing new curricula. This limits the freedom of the major approach in new course development.

This article demonstrates new course lecture and laboratories material development that starts from ground up with both a hardware platform and simulation software design for microprocessor/microcontroller related courses. It is not only very cost effective, but also does not limit the instructor's …

A Corpus-Based Concatenative Speech Synthesis System For Turkish, Haşi̇m Sak, Tunga Güngör, Yaşar Safkan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Speech synthesis is the process of converting written text into machine-generated synthetic speech. Concatenative speech synthesis systems form utterances by concatenating pre-recorded speech units. Corpus-based methods use a large inventory to select the units to be concatenated. In this paper, we design and develop an intelligible and natural sounding corpus-based concatenative speech synthesis system for the Turkish language. The implemented system contains a front-end comprised of text analysis, phonetic analysis, and optional use of transplanted prosody. The unit selection algorithm is based on commonly used Viterbi decoding algorithm of the best-path in the network of the speech units using spectral …

Human Identification Using Gait, Murat Eki̇nci̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Gait refers to the style of walking of an individual. This paper presents a view-invariant approach for human identification at a distance, using gait recognition. Recognition of a person from their gait is a biometric of increasing interest. Based on principal component analysis (PCA), this paper describes a simple, but efficient approach to gait recognition. Binarized silhouettes of a motion object are represented by 1-D signals, which are the basic image features called distance vectors. The distance vectors are differences between the bounding box and silhouette, and are extracted using 4 projections of the silhouette. Based on normalized correlation of …

Adaptive 3d Visual Servo Control Of Robot Manipulators Via Composite Camera Inputs, Türker Şahi̇n, Erkan Zergeroğlu

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper considers the problem of position control of robot manipulators via visual servoing in the presence of uncertainty associated with the robot dynamics and the vision system. Specifically, an adaptive controller is designed to compensate for the uncertainties associated with the mechanical parameters of the robot manipulator and the intrinsic parameters of the cameras. The 3D visual information is obtained from the composite inputs of two separate cameras placed in the robot work space. Despite the uncertainties associated with the camera system and robot dynamics the proposed adaptive controller achieves asymptotic end effector position tracking. A Lyapunov based approach …

Uplink Practical Capacity And Interference Statistics Of Wcdma Cigar-Shaped Microcells For Highways In Rural Zones With Non-Uniform Spatial Traffic Distribution And Imperfect Power Control, Bazil Taha Ahmed, Miguel Calvo Ramon, Leandro De Haro-Ariet

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The capacity (the maximum number of users per sector that the system can support) and the interference statistics (expected value and variance) of sectors composed of cigar-shaped WCDMA microcells are studied. A model of 5 microcells is used to analyze the uplink capacity and interference statistics. The microcells are assumed to exist in rural zone highways. The capacity and the interference statistics of the microcells are studied for different non-uniform spatial traffic distributions. As user density decreases away from the base station, the capacity of the sector increases due to the reduced total power transmitted by the interfering users.

An Ann Based Approach To Improve The Distance Relaying Algorithm, Hassan Khorashadi Zadeh, Zuyi Li

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper presents an artificial neural network- (ANN) based approach to improve the performance of the distance relaying algorithm. The proposed distance relay uses magnitudes of voltages and currents as input signals to find fault locations. In this approach, an ANN has been included in the protection algorithm as an extension of the existing methods, which improves the reliability of the protection operation. The design procedure of the proposed relay is presented in detail. Simulation studies are performed and the influence of changing system parameters, such as fault resistance and source impedance, is studied. Performance studies show that the proposed …

Speech Pre-Processing For Pitch And Pitch-Cylce Evolutions Smoothing, Hassan Farsi

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In low bit rate speech coders, pitch is usually transmitted once per frame and, when needed, the intermediate pitch values are obtained by interpolation between 2 adjacent pitch values. Although pitch usually evolves slowly, sometimes it has irregular variations and the estimated pitch differs from the real one. In addition, some speech coders, e.g., waveform interpolation coders, rely on smooth pitch-cycle evolutions to extract speech model parameters in the analysis stage. However, non-stationary characteristics of speech may lead to inaccurate estimation of the parameters. This affects the synthesised speech quality. We propose a pre-processor, which modifies the residual speech signal …

Sturm-Liouville Equation: The Bridge Between Eigenvalue And Green's Function Problems, Levent Sevgi̇

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This article is intended as an educational aid and discusses guided wave propagation problems that are modeled via the Sturm-Liouville equation in electromagnetics. The bridge between source-free (eigenvalue) and source-driven (Green's function) problems that are represented by the same Sturm-Liouville equation is emphasized. The presentation focuses on representation of an arbitrary source from the features (eigenfunctions) of the problem geometry and extraction of the eigenvalues of a problem from propagation characteristics (Green's function) on a canonical problem; a homogeneously filled parallel plate waveguide with non-penetrable boundaries