Timing analysis of an embedded architecture for a real-time power line communications network

Tese de mestrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (Área de especialização de Telecomunicações). Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior de Engenharia. Instituto Politécnico do Porto.. 200

Satellite Communications

This study is motivated by the need to give the reader a broad view of the developments, key concepts, and technologies related to information society evolution, with a focus on the wireless communications and geoinformation technologies and their role in the environment. Giving perspective, it aims at assisting people active in the industry, the public sector, and Earth science fields as well, by providing a base for their continued work and thinking

Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Network System(Junior Level)

This open access book follows the development rules of network technical talents, simultaneously placing its focus on the transfer of network knowledge, the accumulation of network skills, and the improvement of professionalism. Through the complete process from the elaboration of the theories of network technology to the analysis of application scenarios then to the design and implementation of case projects, readers are enabled to accumulate project experience and eventually acquire knowledge and cultivate their ability so as to lay a solid foundation for adapting to their future positions. This book comprises six chapters, which include “General Operation Safety of Network System,” “Cabling Project,” “Hardware Installation of Network System,” “Basic Knowledge of Network System,” “Basic Operation of Network System,” and “Basic Operation and Maintenance of Network System.” This book can be used for teaching and training for the vocational skills certification of network system construction, operation, and maintenance in the pilot work of Huawei’s “1+X” Certification System, and it is also suitable as a textbook for application-oriented universities, vocational colleges, and technical colleges. In the meantime, it can also serve as a reference book for technicians engaged in network technology development, network management and maintenance, and network system integration. As the world’s leading ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. has covered many fields such as data communication, security, wireless, storage, cloud computing, intelligent computing, and artificial intelligence. Taking Huawei network equipment (routers, switches, wireless controllers, and wireless access points) as the platform, and based on network engineering projects, this book organizes all the contents according to the actual needs of the industry

Synergistic effect of fluorapatite and platelet-rich plasma on cell proliferation and differentiation: A novel strategy to enhance dental implant osseointegration

This study investigated the synergistic effect of fluorapatite (FA) coatings and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) on cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation and mineralisation with a view to the use of this combination in enhancing osseointegration of dental implants. Stainless steel (SS) discs tilted at 45° were hydrothermally coated with FA crystals. PRP was extracted from human blood and the release of platelet growth factors (IGF-1 and PDGF-AB) from non-activated and activated PRP loaded on FA coatings into PBS was measured. Cytotoxicity of FA/PRP combinations and their effect on G292 cell proliferation was tested. Osteogenic differentiation of human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) cultured on FA/PRP was investigated using osteogenic marker expression and histochemical stains. The results showed that FA crystals were disorganised on upper disc surfaces and organised on the under surfaces. Organised FA coatings stimulated greater and more sustained release of IGF-1 from non-activated PRP compared to the control (SS/non-activated PRP). The greatest release of PDGF-AB was triggered by thrombin from PRP loaded on organised FA. FA crystals showed good biocompatibility that was enhanced by PRP. Organised FA coatings induced a high cell proliferation when combined with PRP gel compared to the control (SS/FBS). There was a clear PRP donor variability in ALPL and RUNX-2 gene expression by hDPSCs when PRP used in combination with uncoated SS or FA coated surfaces compared to the control (SS/FBS). Organised FA when combined with FBS or PRP didnot enhance OCN expression but increased OPN expression compared to the control. Organised FA induced less ALP activity but high calcium deposition by hDPSCs compared to uncoated SS when both were combined with FBS or PRP, indicative of osteogenic differentiation. Therefore, it can be concluded that PRP in combination with organised FA coating may offer a promising strategy for bone regeneration around the dental implants

Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Network System(Junior Level)

This open access book follows the development rules of network technical talents, simultaneously placing its focus on the transfer of network knowledge, the accumulation of network skills, and the improvement of professionalism. Through the complete process from the elaboration of the theories of network technology to the analysis of application scenarios then to the design and implementation of case projects, readers are enabled to accumulate project experience and eventually acquire knowledge and cultivate their ability so as to lay a solid foundation for adapting to their future positions. This book comprises six chapters, which include “General Operation Safety of Network System,” “Cabling Project,” “Hardware Installation of Network System,” “Basic Knowledge of Network System,” “Basic Operation of Network System,” and “Basic Operation and Maintenance of Network System.” This book can be used for teaching and training for the vocational skills certification of network system construction, operation, and maintenance in the pilot work of Huawei’s “1+X” Certification System, and it is also suitable as a textbook for application-oriented universities, vocational colleges, and technical colleges. In the meantime, it can also serve as a reference book for technicians engaged in network technology development, network management and maintenance, and network system integration. As the world’s leading ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure and intelligent terminal provider, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. has covered many fields such as data communication, security, wireless, storage, cloud computing, intelligent computing, and artificial intelligence. Taking Huawei network equipment (routers, switches, wireless controllers, and wireless access points) as the platform, and based on network engineering projects, this book organizes all the contents according to the actual needs of the industry

Evaluation of Catalytic and Non-Catalytic Production of Biodiesel from Wet Microbial Media and Reaction Schemes

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can supplement petroleum fuel supply. A major deterrent to commercial biodiesel production from traditional feedstock like soybean, canola or rapeseed oils is the high cost of feedstock: 70 - 95% of total biodiesel production cost. Therefore, a relatively cheaper feedstock is needed to make the price of biodiesel cost-competitive with petroleum diesel. Activated sludge from wastewater treatment plants is a relatively cheaper feedstock and relatively easy to obtain. However, drying of this sludge prior to oil extraction is a major operating cost of this process, as high as 50% of biodiesel production cost. The goal of this research is to address this challenge by investigating the feasibility of using activated sludge from municipal wastewater for cost-efficient biodiesel production with little or no drying of the feedstock. First, the use of water-tolerant catalysts for biodiesel production was investigated to determine the level of water tolerance of these catalysts for the case where the sludge could be dried to an extent. The study investigated porous metal oxide and zeolite catalysts with tunable basicities, acidities and hydrophobicities and proposed a reaction mechanism for the most active catalyst. Next, the alternative where the catalysts were not very tolerant of moisture was considered, and the feasibility of a non-catalytic means of producing biodiesel from wet microbial media using supercritical methanol was also investigated. A model system of oleaginous yeast, Rhodotorula glutinis, was used to evaluate the production of biodiesel in a system similar to sludge. Since the non-catalytic method showed the highest tolerance for water at 90% moisture content, the optimum reaction conditions for highest FAME yields were determined. Two methods of the non-catalytic process, 1-step and 2-step processes, that could produce high FAME yields were studied and compared in terms of FAME yields and kinetic rate constants. With these results, an economic analysis was performed to investigate the cost efficiency of both methods of the non-catalytic process and recommend one with great potential for producing biodiesel from activated sludge at a cost-competitive price

The ciao prolog system

Ciao is a public domain, next generation multi-paradigm programming environment with a unique set of features: Ciao offers a complete Prolog system, supporting ISO-Prolog, but its novel modular design allows both restricting and extending the language. As a result, it allows working with fully declarative subsets of Prolog and also to extend these subsets (or ISO-Prolog) both syntactically and semantically. Most importantly, these restrictions and extensions can be activated separately on each program module so that several extensions can coexist in the same application for different modules. Ciao also supports (through such extensions) programming with functions, higher-order (with predicate abstractions), constraints, and objects, as well as feature terms (records), persistence, several control rules (breadth-first search, iterative deepening, ...), concurrency (threads/engines), a good base for distributed execution (agents), and parallel execution. Libraries also support WWW programming, sockets, external interfaces (C, Java, TclTk, relational databases, etc.), etc. Ciao offers support for programming in the large with a robust module/object system, module-based separate/incremental compilation (automatically -no need for makefiles), an assertion language for declaring (optional) program properties (including types and modes, but also determinacy, non-failure, cost, etc.), automatic static inference and static/dynamic checking of such assertions, etc. Ciao also offers support for programming in the small producing small executables (including only those builtins used by the program) and support for writing scripts in Prolog. The Ciao programming environment includes a classical top-level and a rich emacs interface with an embeddable source-level debugger and a number of execution visualization tools. The Ciao compiler (which can be run outside the top level shell) generates several forms of architecture-independent and stand-alone executables, which run with speed, efficiency and executable size which are very competive with other commercial and academic Prolog/CLP systems. Library modules can be compiled into compact bytecode or C source files, and linked statically, dynamically, or autoloaded. The novel modular design of Ciao enables, in addition to modular program development, effective global program analysis and static debugging and optimization via source to source program transformation. These tasks are performed by the Ciao preprocessor ( ciaopp, distributed separately). The Ciao programming environment also includes lpdoc, an automatic documentation generator for LP/CLP programs. It processes Prolog files adorned with (Ciao) assertions and machine-readable comments and generates manuals in many formats including postscript, pdf, texinfo, info, HTML, man, etc. , as well as on-line help, ascii README files, entries for indices of manuals (info, WWW, ...), and maintains WWW distribution sites