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The Study of Sustainable Energy at UB
No full textSustainable energy includes solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, geothermal energy, and biomass. It has environmental, health and cost advantages over fossil fuels. Therefore, it attracts more and more attention on the energy harvesting, conversion, and distributed storage. In this paper, the facility and current research topics in sustainable energy are presented. In the mean time, the energy-related courses are introduced for the training of the next generation of engineers
Optimal Design of 3-Link Planar Manipulators using Grashof's Theorem
No full textThe design of robotic manipulators is dictated by a set of pre-determined performance parameters and functionalities. These performance parameters are often defined in terms of the workspace dexterity, manipubility, and accuracy. These parameters can be used in the design process to optimize the manipulator configuration. In this work we present an algorithm for the optimal design of a three link planar manipulator using Grashof's Theorem
A Simulation Model for Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks
No full textOne of the critical issues in wireless sensor network is power saving scheme as network should be considered to operate more efficiently. The sensor nodes are usually operated by a finite number of batteries and it should have a certain lifetime for gathering, processing, and transmitting information. Since some sensor nodes may fail due to lack of power, this consideration has led to give more interest about routing protocols. Depending on the network structure, a sensor network can be hierarchical or cluster-based hierarchical model, where the nodes will play different roles in the networks. We present three different types of routing protocols: LEACH, PEGASIS, and VGA, several simulations are conducted to analyze the performance of these protocols including the power consumption and overall network performance. On the average, VGA has the worst power consumption when the sensing range is limited, while VGA is the best when the sensing range is increased
Functional Study of Magnetotactic Bacteria in VLSI Design
No full textMagnetotactic bacteria are a type of prokaryotic cells that can orient and migrate along the geomagnetic field lines in order to fulfill their physiological functions and anaerobic/microaerophilic requirements. This work investigates the magnetotaxis (sensitivity to magnetic field) of Magnetospirillum magneticum and studies the ability to apply this function to very large scale integration (VLSI) design and fabrication. It is known that magnetotaxis is closely associated with a chain of magnetic particles inside the bacterial cell that acts as a dipole. MATLAB analysis and modeling as well as control of a mesh of current carrying conductors using Mentor Graphics indicate that there is a possibility of these bacteria being manipulated (through their shapes, sizes and speeds) to use them as "skilled workers" to transport one or more atoms/molecules in order to form a nano-scale, bottom-up construction methodology beneficial to the field of integrated circuit fabrication. A further study would be to analyze the various pathways responsible for the formation of magnetic crystals through nucleation inside the bacterial cell in order to increase the sensitivity for cells much smaller than currently available. The engineering education component that stems from this research is to potentially realize the use of biomolecules to fabricate integrated circuits below the current state of art feature size possible
Implementing an Affordable High Performance Computing for Teaching-oriented Computer Science Curriculum
No full textThe main objective of this poster is to present an affordable and easy-to-use high performance cluster system that can be used for the classroom in teaching-oriented computer science curriculum. In order to address this, we design and implement an affordable high performance cluster system that is based on PlayStation 3(r). PS3 is a well-known for game console manufactured by Sony. Since each PS3 console has IBM Cell BE processor that consists of 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) and 1 Power Processing Element (PPE), it can be used as a processing node with multiple-core processor in the cluster system. In addition, the implemented cluster system has been used for new and existing computer science courses, such as CPSC 592: Parallel and Distributed Database, CPSC 590: Parallel and Distributed Processing, and CPSC 591: Parallel Programming
A Single-center, Double blind, Randomized, Controlled Study to Evaluate the Relative Efficacy of Sublingual and Oral Vitamin B Complex Administration in Reducing Total Serum Homocysteine Levels
No full textObjective: Reports correlating total homocysteine (tHcy) concentrations with arteriosclerosis have become a matter of interest amongst healthcare professionals and the public. Several commercial preparations of vitamin B complexes have been marketed as supplements intended to reduce elevated levels of tHcy. Among these preparations are those that have been specifically designed for sublingual administration. This study is designed to evaluate the relative efficacy of sublingually vs. orally delivered vitamin B complex in reducing serum tHcy levels. Design: Forty-one subjects, between the ages of 50-80 years with total serum tHcy concentrations exceeding 11 µmol/l, were treated with a six-week regimen of vitamin B complex. Each B complex consisted of 1000 µg vitamin B12 (as methylcobalamin), 400 µg folate (as folic acid), and 5 mg vitamin B6 (as pyridoxine HCl). Participants in the study were randomized into two groups designated, retrospectively, as SL and PO. Members of the group SL were given a sublingually delivered vitamin B complex and a matching orally delivered placebo. Members of group PO were given a orally delivered vitamin complex and a matching sublingually delivered placebo. A statistically significant reduction in tHcy values was observed in both groups upon completion of the six-week protocol
A Multi-algorithm, High Reliability, Extensible Steganalyzer Using Services Oriented Architecture
No full textThis thesis is being archived as a Digitized Shelf Copy for campus access to current students and staff only. We currently cannot provide this open access without the author's permission. If you are the author of this work and desire to provide it open access or wish access removed, please contact the Wahlstrom Library to discuss permission.Network security has received increased attention in the last decades. Encryption has laid itself as the traditional method to transmit information in secrecy. Although strong encryption is a very secure approach for transmitting information, it can be easily identified that transmitted information is encrypted. Once the information is identified as encrypted, an intruder can block the encrypted transmission. In contrast, Steganography is a viable option to hide information in transmission without being identified. It provides a blanket that hides encrypted information. Thus, it becomes essential to develop mechanisms that reveal if the communicated information has any embedded data. Steganalysis is the art of detecting invisible communication and is a very challenging field due to different types of media and embedding techniques involved. Existing research in Steganalysis has focused on developing individual stego detection algorithms for a particular media type or for a particular embedding technique. In this dissertation we are proposing to develop a unified Steganalyzer that can not only work with different media types such as images and audio, but further is capable of providing improved accuracy in stego detection through the use of multiple algorithms. Our proposed system integrates different steganalysis techniques in a reliable Steganalyzer by using a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). The SOA architecture not only allows for concurrent processing to speed up the system, but also provides higher reliability than those reported in the existing literature because multiple stego detection algorithms are incorporated simultaneously. Furthermore, the extendable nature of the SOA implementation allows for easy addition of new Steganalysis algorithms to the system in terms of services. The universal steganalysis technique proposed in this dissertation involves two processes; feature extraction and feature classification. An improved 2D Mel-Cepstrum implementation is used for wav files feature extraction. Intra-blocks technique is used for jpeg images feature extraction. The feature classification process is implemented using three different classifiers; neural network classifier, Support Vector Machines classifier, and AdaBoost classifier. The unified steganalyzer is tested for jpeg images and wav audio files. The accuracy of classification ranges from 90.0% to 99.9% depending on the object type and the feature extraction method. In particular, an enhancement of 2D Mel-Cepstrum implementation is introduced that achieves an accuracy of 99.9%. This is significantly better result than the average detection accuracy of 89.9% to 96.7% reported by Liu [1]. Finally, an extensible classifier is introduced that allows adding detection of new embedding techniques to the currently supported embedding techniques, so that the framework will maintain its reliability even if new embedding techniques are introduced