203 research outputs found
The development of a detector system for mint object spectroscopy on the Isaac Newton telescope
No full textThe work reported in this thesis describes the development of the CCD instrumentation for the Faint Object Spectrograph on the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, more commonly known as the La Palma Observatory. The Faint Object Spectrograph is a highly efficient, fixed-format CCD spectrograph aimed at low resolution spectrophotometry (15-20 A FWHM) over a wide spectral range (400-1050 nm). Its high throughput, compared with that of more conventional spectrographs, is due to the small number of optical surfaces, and the minimum vignetting which results from, locating the CCD inside the spectrograph camera. A CCD camera system is described which was developed primarily to test and commission the Faint Object Spectrograph, but also to assess the characteristics of the GEC P8603 CCD used In the spectrograph, and optimize its performance for this application. The use of CCDs in astronomy is now commonplace but there still remains some uncertainty as to which aspects of their performance need to be most critically assessed when choosing a device for a particular application. It is argued that it is important to consider not only the obvious characteristics such as quantum efficiency, spectral coverage, readout noise and geometrical format, but also, and particularly at astronomically relevant low-light levels, the consequences of the more subtle properties such as charge transfer efficiency, threshold effects and chip defects. The CCD detector in the Faint Object Spectrograph is located inside the spectrograph camera and needs to be positioned to high accuracy within the optical path. A microprocessor system is described which enables the CCD detector to be aligned remotely from the observer's control console. Finally, the commissioning of the Faint Object Spectrograph on the Isaac Newton Telescope is described, and some of the first results obtained during commissioning are presented in order to illustrate its potential in the field of faint object spectroscopy
Arthur William Upfield: a biography
No full textThis dissertation is an exhaustive account of the life and work of Arthur William Upfield (1890-1964). It is presented as a critical biography and narrates the life of the writer, in his socio-cultural milieu, from birth. It also positions Upfield as a writer who dealt with issues of Aboriginality at a time when this was a singularly polemical subject. My work is informed by the theory of Zygmunt Bauman and others and is posited in the context of late-modern biography theory.
English-born, Upfield arrived in Australia in 1911 and took work in the bush, serving overseas with the Australian army at the outbreak of World War I and marrying an Australian army nurse in Egypt. Returning with his wife and son to Australia in 1921 he intermittently carried his swag until he was employed patrolling the Western Australian number 1 rabbit-proof fence for three years to 1931. By that time he had published four novels, including two crime novels featuring his fictional creation, the part-Aboriginal, part-European, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte ('Bony'), arguably the first fully-developed character in Australian popular fiction.
Leaving the fence, Upfield settled with his family in Perth and wrote full-time until joining the Melbourne Herald in 1933. Retrenched, he resumed career writing to be further interrupted by a war-time intelligence posting in 1939. In 1943 the first Bony mysteries were published in America, where Upfield's critical success was maintained until his death. In 1945 he left his wife for Jessica Uren, to whom he remained devoted.
Upfield's in all twenty-nine Bony novels, many of which have been translated across eleven languages, afforded him notable success both at home and abroad, in good part due to his descriptive gifts and the uniqueness of his fictional character, the part-Aboriginal Bony
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)
No full textAbstract Background To infer homology and subsequently gene function, the Smith-Waterman (SW) algorithm is used to find the optimal local alignment between two sequences. When searching sequence databases that may contain hundreds of millions of sequences, this algorithm becomes computationally expensive. Results In this paper, we focused on accelerating the Smith-Waterman algorithm by using FPGA-based hardware that implemented a module for computing the score of a single cell of the SW matrix. Then using a grid of this module, the entire SW matrix was computed at the speed of field propagation through the FPGA circuit. These modifications dramatically accelerated the algorithm's computation time by up to 160 folds compared to a pure software implementation running on the same FPGA with an Altera Nios II softprocessor. Conclusion This design of FPGA accelerated hardware offers a new promising direction to seeking computation improvement of genomic database searching.</p
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-1
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p>containing the scores and flags from the three neighbouring cells (north, northwest and west). The output is one 32-bit data containing the final scores and the direction of alignment gap. The grey areas indicate the unused data bits. B. Schematic design of the inputs and outputs from one 1×SCM
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-5
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p>ftware; grey, 64×SCM over 1×SCM; white, 1×SCM over pure software
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-2
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p>ce. The arrows show the propagation directions of the signals. Because the 64×SCM is unclocked, there is no pre-determined path of propagation. B. When the search and/or target sequences are greater than 8, the scoring matrix is partitioned into many 8 by 8 segments, each to be computed by the 64×SCM
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-4
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p>d by the following vector - (we = write enable for SRAM blocks, rm = reset 64×SCM matrix, ena_seq = enable sequences to be loaded, ena_sf = enable scores and flags to be loaded). To clear all scores and flags from the matrix, the FSM is set to the 'Reset' state. Next, the FSM remains in the 'Wait for Sequence Load' state until two sequences of length 8 or less have been loaded by the C program. Once this loading is completed, the C program will assert the done_load signal. At this point, the FSM releases the matrix's reset signal which causes the sequences, scores and flags to propagate through the matrix. After a set delay determined by the critical path of the circuit, the FSM asserts the done_sw signal, and enables the values just calculated to be written into the RAM. Theses scores and flags will be read from the RAM for the next block. The FSM then returns to the 'Wait for Sequence Load' state, and waits for the next length of sequences to come from the C program. This loop is repeated until the entire Smith-Waterman matrix has been calculated and the score of the optimal alignment has been determined. Finally, the results are printed to a command window on the computer. The FSM can be reset by writing to a status register, allowing the matrix to be used for another set of sequences
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-6
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p> query DNA sequence length (in base-pairs). Circles are the 64×SCM implementation; squares are 1×SCM implementation; and diamonds are pure software implementation
160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-7
No full text<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "160-fold acceleration of the Smith-Waterman algorithm using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/185</p><p>BMC Bioinformatics 2007;8():185-185.</p><p>Published online 7 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1896180.</p><p></p> N, and W are cells to the northwest, north, and west of the cell of interest X
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