661 research outputs found
Proposal for a Mountain Search and Rescue Plan for the West Kootenay Mountain Search and Rescue Group
No full textThe proposed mountain search and rescue plan will direct the actions of the West Kootenay Mountain Search and Rescue Group which is a part of the Provincial Emergency Program. Accidents do occur in the area and a standard procedure of action is needed. The proposed plan details actions that will get rescue volunteers to the staging area; it does not detail actual search and rescue procedures. Presently, there is a search and rescue organization and equipment is available. Everything is ready to go except that volunteer lists have not been compiled and no plan of action exists. The proposed plan is simple and easy to read in a stressful situation. The plan is divided up into four sections that are titled Procedure, Responsibilities, Resources, and Forms. Procedures are explained and flowcharts are used to illustrate relationships. The procedures are primarily those of the Field Rescue Leader who is the key figure in a search and rescue operation. Responsibilities are briefly stated so that people are clear on what their role is during an operation. Alternatives for acquiring equipment and manpower are listed in the third section of the plan. A large part of the plan is made up of forms to ensure that all needed information is recorded. For the proposed mountain search and rescue plan to be effective, all procedures must be practiced, volunteers must fully understand the plan, the forms must be distributed to the proper people and appropriate changes should be made to improve the plan if necessary. The proposed mountain search and rescue plan is a simple, easy-to-read guide to search and rescue in the West Kootenay area.Student paper submitted for Wildland Recreation 270.
Includes bibliographical references (leaf 9).
Letter of transmittal to Rescue Group inserted
Marine Protected Areas and commercial fisheries: the existing fishery in potential protected areas, and a modelling study of the impact of protected areas on North Sea Plaice
No full textDit rapport presenteert resultaten van onderzoek, dat in 2005/2006 is uitgevoerd. In het kader van de Europese Vogel en Habitat Richtlijnen dienen lidstaten te beschermen gebieden op zee aan te wijzen, wat mogelijk zou leiden tot beperkingen van visserijactiviteiten in deze gebieden. De vraag was, welke invloed dit zou hebben op de vis en visserij. In dit onderzoek is enerzijds een statische beschrijving opgesteld van de visserijinspanning en de vangsten in de voorgestelde gebieden, en is anderzijds een eerste analyse (simulatie-model) opgezet van het lange-termijn effect op migrerende vis (schol). Dit onderzoek werd eind 2006 afgerond met een concept-rapport
Musubi: Middleware for Secure Mobile Collaborative Applications
No full textAs we work more and more while on the go, mobile collaborative applications will play an increasingly important role in our lives. We note that the conventional client/server model for these applications poses several shortcomings. The model is unintuitive and unnecessarily complex. Centralized servers further introduce cost, inflexibility, and concerns about privacy. Musubi is a middleware for mobile collaborative applications based on a top-level peer-to-peer architecture and secure group communication. We demonstrate how a secure messenger application can be built on top of our system. Three diverse case studies in citizen journalism, cross-generational interaction, and computer science education are used to evaluate the middleware. We show that Musubi simplifies the development of collaborative applications. The created applications are transport agnostic and can provide a good user experience while using fully end-to-end encrypted communication.Software Engineering Research GroupComputer ScienceElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Holmium microparticles for intratumoral radioablation
No full textThe aim of this dissertation is to describe the preparation and characterization of a holmium-loaded radioablation device: holmium acetylacetonate microspheres (HoAcAcMS). This device is to be injected directly into unresectable, chemorefractory, solid tumors, a technique referred to as (interstitial) brachytherapy. The element holmium is ideally suited for this type of therapy, because it can be visualized in vivo using both nuclear imaging, X-ray computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Since the injection volume is limited in solid tumors, the activity per sphere should be as high as possible. The holmium content of the HoAcAc microspheres is 45% by weight, which is considered sufficient for intratumoral radioablation. After incubation for 180 days in phosphate buffer, the release of holmium (3+) from the microspheres was 0.50.2%. Elemental analysis, infrared spectroscopy and time of flight scanning secondary ion mass spectrometry showed that the acetylacetonate in the microspheres was replaced by phosphate within four days, creating a very stable complex. Interestingly, scanning electron microscopy revealed that the particles had retained their size and shape, irrespective of the incubation time, which is an indication that these particles are stable systems. The in vivo stability was assessed after intratumoral administration of 166HoAcAcMS to VX2 carcinoma-bearing rabbits. The holmium content in urine, faeces and blood was below the detection limit, indicating that no holmium had leached from the microspheres. It is concluded that 166HoAcAcMS are highly stable in vivo and can therefore be safely used for radioablation of malignancies. A dose-escalation feasibility study was performed to determine the safety and efficacy of 166HoAcAcMS as a radioablation device in three feline liver cancer patients. Shortly after treatment by intratumoral injections with 166HoAcAcMS, the clinical condition of the cats improved markedly, as did most biochemical and hematological parameters resulting in a meaningful extension of life in all animals. The efficacy of 166HoAcAcMS as a minimally invasive ablation device for renal cell carcinoma was tested in a murine renal cell carcinoma model. The mice of the 166HoAcAcMS group showed an arrest of tumor growth, whereas the tumors in the control group showed an exponential increase in tumor volume. Additionally, the multimodality imaging characteristics were exploited by performing microCT, microSPECT and MR imaging on dedicated animal scanners. All imaging modalities showed a similar distribution of the dose of 166HoAcAcMS. Quantitative analysis of SPECT images, and the possibility to use these images for dosimetry is a fundamental advantage of the 166HoAcAcMS over other ablative techniques. It is concluded that tumor radioablation using 166HoAcAcMS, when injected percutaneously, is feasible and efficacious and not associated with adverse side effect
A 12-bit 500MS/s Pipeline Split-ADC
No full text"Split-ADC" calibration is a recently proposed digital background calibration architecture. It requires a much lower number of cycles to calibrate the ADC errors due to its deterministic nature, without placing any additional analog complexity. While new error estimation techniques are being explored using this architecture through simulations, a hardware platform flexible in terms of performance and power consumption is much more desirable. A 12-bit, 500MS/s pipeline "Split-ADC" is designed in TSMC 65nm CMOS. The stage amplifiers of the pipeline ADC are designed to be power scalable so that their settling time varies linearly over a wide range of bias current. A higher power efficiency is achieved in the ADC by using the current-mirror opamp topology in the MDACs operating at 1V supply, and by removing the sample-and-hold amplifier. The overall pipeline ADC displays a peak SNDR of 66dB at a sampling frequency of 312.5 MS/s, with the analog core of each half-ADC consuming 77.3mW. This translates into a peak figure of merit of 0.3pJ/conversion for the designed split-ADC.Microelectronics & Computer EngineeringElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Het tellen van alternerendetekenmatrices
No full textBachelor TWWiskundeElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Bit-error rate measurement setup and comparator design
No full textBit-error rate (BER) of comparators is becoming one of the limiting factors in the design of high speed ADCs. BER measurement setup is introduced and implemented in this thesis. Using this BER measurement setup gives us the opportunity to compare the BER of different comparators. It also enables us to study the effect of different parameters such as bias current, and power supply variations on the BER of these comparators. Capacitive based comparator is also proposed in this work which is a new topology for comparators and simulations show that it can perform better than the other conventional comparators with respect to BER. The capacitive based comparator and 2 conventional comparators are implemented in the BER measurement setup so that they can also be compared on silicon.microelectronicsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Semiometrics: Applying Ontologies across Large-Scale Digital Libraries
No full textAs large-scale digital libraries become more available and complete, not to mention more numerous, it is clear there is a need for services that can draw together and perform inference calculations on the metadata produced. However, the traditional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) model, while efficiently constructed and optimised for many business structures, does not necessarily cope well with issues of concurrent data updates and retrieval at the scale of hundreds of thousands of papers. At the same time the growth of RDF and the increasing interest in Semantic Web technologies perhaps begins to present a viable alternative at a scalable, practical level. This paper considers a specific application of large-scale metadata analysis and conducts scalability tests using real-world data. It concludes that RDF technologies are both a scalable and performance-realistic alternative to traditional RDBMS approaches. It also shows that for relationship-based queries on large-scale metadata stores, RDF technologies can significantly out-perform traditional RDBMS approaches by allowing both retrieval and updating of data in a timely manner
Met lijnolie gemodificeerde alkylharsen: Onderzoekingen met behulp van fractioneren
No full textApplied Science
A Low-Power Class-AB Residue Amplifier for a 12bit 500MS/sec Pipeline ADC with Digital Calibration
No full textThis work mainly focuses on designing a low-power class-AB residue amplifier for a 12bit 500MS/sec pipeline ADC with digital calibration. A foreground ideal calibration test bench has been implemented in MATLAB to correct non-linearities of the amplifier up to the 5th order. A detailed comparison has been made between a class-A amplifier and a class-AB amplifier. Simulation results show that the class-AB amplifier outperforms the class-A amplifier in all performance aspects such as gain, bandwidth, linearity, noise and power consumption, except for the CMRR. A new class-AB amplifier topology has been proposed, which alleviates problems associated with the level shifting capacitors. Due to an insufficient accuracy of the proposed class-AB amplifier in order to save power, the residue output signal from the flip-around MDAC topology becomes distorted. To resolve this problem, the flip-around MDAC has been replaced by a simple charge amplifier MDAC topology. Timing scheme of the pipeline ADC has been modified due to remove the timing related problems and ISI. In addition, layout of the first stage MDAC has been done in TSMC 40nm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulations have shown an excellent Figure-of-Merit (FOM) of 8.08fJ/conv, at an ENOB of 10.8bit and signal bandwidth of 250MHz, which prove that the design is not only energy efficient, but also have a superior speed-resolution product.MicroelectronicsMicroelectronics & Computer EngineeringElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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