Mathematical Estimation of Logical Masking Capability of Majority/Minority Gates Used in Nanoelectronic Circuits

In nanoelectronic circuit synthesis, the majority gate and the inverter form the basic combinational logic primitives. This paper deduces the mathematical formulae to estimate the logical masking capability of majority gates, which are used extensively in nanoelectronic digital circuit synthesis. The mathematical formulae derived to evaluate the logical masking capability of majority gates holds well for minority gates, and a comparison with the logical masking capability of conventional gates such as NOT, AND/NAND, OR/NOR, and XOR/XNOR is provided. It is inferred from this research work that the logical masking capability of majority/minority gates is similar to that of XOR/XNOR gates, and with an increase of fan-in the logical masking capability of majority/minority gates also increases

Advanced information processing system: Inter-computer communication services

The purpose is to document the functional requirements and detailed specifications for the Inter-Computer Communications Services (ICCS) of the Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS). An introductory section is provided to outline the overall architecture and functional requirements of the AIPS and to present an overview of the ICCS. An overview of the AIPS architecture as well as a brief description of the AIPS software is given. The guarantees of the ICCS are provided, and the ICCS is described as a seven-layered International Standards Organization (ISO) Model. The ICCS functional requirements, functional design, and detailed specifications as well as each layer of the ICCS are also described. A summary of results and suggestions for future work are presented

Prediction of progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis using CT scans atbaseline: A quantum particle swarm optimization - Random forest approach

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease characterized by an unpredictable progressive declinein lung function. Natural history of IPF is unknown and the prediction of disease progression at the time ofdiagnosis is notoriously difficult. High resolution computed tomography (HRCT) has been used for the diagnosisof IPF, but not generally for monitoring purpose. The objective of this work is to develop a novel predictivemodel for the radiological progression pattern at voxel-wise level using only baseline HRCT scans. Mainly, thereare two challenges: (a) obtaining a data set of features for region of interest (ROI) on baseline HRCT scans andtheir follow-up status; and (b) simultaneously selecting important features from high-dimensional space, andoptimizing the prediction performance. We resolved the first challenge by implementing a study design andhaving an expert radiologist contour ROIs at baseline scans, depending on its progression status in follow-upvisits. For the second challenge, we integrated the feature selection with prediction by developing an algorithmusing a wrapper method that combines quantum particle swarm optimization to select a small number of featureswith random forest to classify early patterns of progression. We applied our proposed algorithm to analyzeanonymized HRCT images from 50 IPF subjects from a multi-center clinical trial. We showed that it yields aparsimonious model with 81.8% sensitivity, 82.2% specificity and an overall accuracy rate of 82.1% at the ROIlevel. These results are superior to other popular feature selections and classification methods, in that ourmethod produces higher accuracy in prediction of progression and more balanced sensitivity and specificity witha smaller number of selected features. Our work is the first approach to show that it is possible to use onlybaseline HRCT scans to predict progressive ROIs at 6 months to 1year follow-ups using artificial intelligence

A fault-tolerant multiprocessor architecture for aircraft, volume 1

A fault-tolerant multiprocessor architecture is reported. This architecture, together with a comprehensive information system architecture, has important potential for future aircraft applications. A preliminary definition and assessment of a suitable multiprocessor architecture for such applications is developed

Working-class experiences of male unemployment in Darlington

This research is focused upon variety in working-class experiences of unemployment» It explores how such variety may reflect differentiation within the working-class in employment opportunities in the context of recent economic change. Experiences of unemployment are examined with regard to the implications for standards of living, and domestic and social relations. Particular attention is paid to the degree and nature of deprivation associated with unemployment and the consequent fall in income. Finally, given the electoral victories of the Conservatives despite high levels of unemployment, this research asks if unemployment constitutes a central political issue for the working-class and whether any variation in attitude is discernible according to the labour market positions of different sections of the working-class. Interviews with twenty working-class households with varied employment histories are utilised to explore these issues. An important conclusion is that the unemployed do not constitute a homogeneous group nor is unemployment a uniform experience. For many of the unemployed the experience is likely to be a temporary one, though their subsequent employment is likely to be less favourable than previous jobs in terms of wage levels and working conditions. There is nevertheless a section of the workforce who experience long term unemployment, unskilled manual workers being particularly disadvantaged. This group is likely to be subject to considerable hardship as a consequence of dependency on social security benefits as a main source of income. Yet it is past employment experiences rather than those of unemployment which tend to shape attitudes both to domestic relations and a range of political issues, hence the value of the concept of career history. Significant differences according to experiences of unemployment did exist, however, in attitudes to government measures aimed directly at the unemployed, such as its income maintenance measures

Corporate governance in the context of corporate restructuring

The purpose of this thesis is to study corporate governance through a holistic approach by reviewing how the interests of shareholders, creditors and employees are protected and constrained throughout the life of a company. The thesis begins with the view that corporate governance is a control system with both an internal and an external governance scheme. By restructuring the parameters in both schemes, I set up a three-dimensional structure to study corporate governance. I first select shareholders, creditors, and employees as three factors of the axis of subjects. I then group social political issues, contracts, and laws and regulations as factors on the axis of constraints. After that, I define the third axis as the life cycle of corporate governance, parameters on which include corporate governance in the normal life, flotations, takeovers, and insolvency. By setting up this three-dimensional structure, I argue that corporate governance must be studied through a holistic approach integrating both the institutional perspective and the life cycle of corporate governance. The institutional perspective emphasizes the importance of social political issues in shaping the combination of constraints on the interests of stakeholders. The discussion in this thesis shows that different stakeholders have different combinations of constraints in safeguarding their own interests. On the whole, the current governance institution can provide due protection to stakeholders in different phases of the life cycle of corporate governance. One implication of this discussion is that company law is not the only relevant issue in corporate governance studies. In turn, shareholder primacy is a misleading conception in the institution of corporate governance even if it is a valid argument in the specific coverage of company law. The dynamic perspective on corporate governance points out that corporate governance also develops in a life cycle pattern. It is important to realize that, similar to the widely recognized path-dependence in corporate governance in comparative governance studies, the development of corporate governance practices in any company is also a continuous process in that existing governance practices and structures may make a difference to the occurrence of the later phases in the life cycle of corporate governance. Moreover, the dynamic perspective accentuates the importance of corporate governance around insolvency compared with that of other phases. Indeed, the solvency criteria which are legally prescribed merely in financial terms can not only exclude any serious consideration of non-financial interests but also reinforce the established finance oriented governance practices. This study also provides some thoughts on the current reform of corporate governance. In general, corporate governance is a multi-disciplinary issue and reform of corporate governance practices must be carried out with both an institutional and a dynamic approach. Accordingly, corporate governance reform can only be an ongoing and piecemeal process. Any abrupt change to the established system may only do a disservice and is thus inadvisable

Advanced information processing system: The Army fault tolerant architecture conceptual study. Volume 2: Army fault tolerant architecture design and analysis

Described here is the Army Fault Tolerant Architecture (AFTA) hardware architecture and components and the operating system. The architectural and operational theory of the AFTA Fault Tolerant Data Bus is discussed. The test and maintenance strategy developed for use in fielded AFTA installations is presented. An approach to be used in reducing the probability of AFTA failure due to common mode faults is described. Analytical models for AFTA performance, reliability, availability, life cycle cost, weight, power, and volume are developed. An approach is presented for using VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) to describe and design AFTA's developmental hardware. A plan is described for verifying and validating key AFTA concepts during the Dem/Val phase. Analytical models and partial mission requirements are used to generate AFTA configurations for the TF/TA/NOE and Ground Vehicle missions

Robust Mobile Malware Detection

The increasing popularity and use of smartphones and hand-held devices have made them the most popular target for malware attackers. Researchers have proposed machine learning-based models to automatically detect malware attacks on these devices. Since these models learn application behaviors solely from the extracted features, choosing an appropriate and meaningful feature set is one of the most crucial steps for designing an effective mobile malware detection system. There are four categories of features for mobile applications. Previous works have taken arbitrary combinations of these categories to design models, resulting in sub-optimal performance. This thesis systematically investigates the individual impact of these feature categories on mobile malware detection systems. Feature categories that complement each other are investigated and categories that add redundancy to the feature space (thereby degrading the performance) are analyzed. In the process, the combination of feature categories that provides the best detection results is identified. Ensuring reliability and robustness of the above-mentioned malware detection systems is of utmost importance as newer techniques to break down such systems continue to surface. Adversarial attack is one such evasive attack that can bypass a detection system by carefully morphing a malicious sample even though the sample was originally correctly identified by the same system. Self-crafted adversarial samples can be used to retrain a model to defend against such attacks. However, randomly using too many such samples, as is currently done in the literature, can further degrade detection performance. This work proposed two intelligent approaches to retrain a classifier through the intelligent selection of adversarial samples. The first approach adopts a distance-based scheme where the samples are chosen based on their distance from malware and benign cluster centers while the second selects the samples based on a probability measure derived from a kernel-based learning method. The second method achieved a 6% improvement in terms of accuracy. To ensure practical deployment of malware detection systems, it is necessary to keep the real-world data characteristics in mind. For example, the benign applications deployed in the market greatly outnumber malware applications. However, most studies have assumed a balanced data distribution. Also, techniques to handle imbalanced data in other domains cannot be applied directly to mobile malware detection since they generate synthetic samples with broken functionality, making them invalid. In this regard, this thesis introduces a novel synthetic over-sampling technique that ensures valid sample generation. This technique is subsequently combined with a dynamic cost function in the learning scheme that automatically adjusts minority class weight during model training which counters the bias towards the majority class and stabilizes the model. This hybrid method provided a 9% improvement in terms of F1-score. Aiming to design a robust malware detection system, this thesis extensively studies machine learning-based mobile malware detection in terms of best feature category combination, resilience against evasive attacks, and practical deployment of detection models. Given the increasing technological advancements in mobile and hand-held devices, this study will be very useful for designing robust cybersecurity systems to ensure safe usage of these devices.Doctor of Philosoph

Doing business 2016

노트 : Economy Profile 2016Korea, Rep