A Low-Voltage, Low-Power 4-bit BCD Adder, designed using the Clock Gated Power Gating, and the DVT Scheme

This paper proposes a Low-Power, Energy Efficient 4-bit Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) adder design where the conventional 4-bit BCD adder has been modified with the Clock Gated Power Gating Technique. Moreover, the concept of DVT (Dual-vth) scheme has been introduced while designing the full adder blocks to reduce the Leakage Power, as well as, to maintain the overall performance of the entire circuit. The reported architecture of 4-bit BCD adder is designed using 45 nm technology and it consumes 1.384 {\mu}Watt of Average Power while operating with a frequency of 200 MHz, and a Supply Voltage (Vdd) of 1 Volt. The results obtained from different simulation runs on SPICE, indicate the superiority of the proposed design compared to the conventional 4-bit BCD adder. Considering the product of Average Power and Delay, for the operating frequency of 200 MHz, a fair 47.41 % reduction compared to the conventional design has been achieved with this proposed scheme.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of 2013 IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Computing and Control (ISPCC,13

Serious Toys: Teaching Computer Science Concepts to Pre-Collegiate Students

Advancements in science and engineering have driven innovation in the United States for more than two centuries. The last several decades have brought to the forefront the importance of such innovation to our domestic and global economies. To continue to succeed in this information-based, technologically advanced society, we must ensure that the next generation of students are developing computational thinking skills beyond what was acceptable in past years. Computational thinking represents a collection of structured problem solving skills that cross-cut educational disciplines. There is significant future value in introducing these skills as early as practical in students\u27 academic careers. Over the past four years, we have developed, piloted, and evaluated a series of outreach modules designed to introduce fundamental computing concepts to young learners. Each module is based on a small embedded device a \u27serious toy\u27 designed to simultaneously engage visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners through lectures, visual demonstrations, and hands-on activities. We have piloted these modules with more than 770 students, and the evaluation results show that the program is having a positive impact. The evaluation instruments for our pilots consist of pre- and post-attitudinal surveys and pre- and post-quizzes. The surveys are designed to assess student attitudes toward computer science and student self-efficacy with respect to the material covered. The quizzes are designed to assess students\u27 content understanding. In this dissertation, we describe the modules and associated serious toys. We also describe the module evaluation methods, the pilot groups, and the results for each pilot study

Making up Numbers

"Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.

Making up Numbers

"Making up Numbers: A History of Invention in Mathematics offers a detailed but accessible account of a wide range of mathematical ideas. Starting with elementary concepts, it leads the reader towards aspects of current mathematical research. The book explains how conceptual hurdles in the development of numbers and number systems were overcome in the course of history, from Babylon to Classical Greece, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and so to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narrative moves from the Pythagorean insistence on positive multiples to the gradual acceptance of negative numbers, irrationals and complex numbers as essential tools in quantitative analysis. Within this chronological framework, chapters are organised thematically, covering a variety of topics and contexts: writing and solving equations, geometric construction, coordinates and complex numbers, perceptions of ‘infinity’ and its permissible uses in mathematics, number systems, and evolving views of the role of axioms. Through this approach, the author demonstrates that changes in our understanding of numbers have often relied on the breaking of long-held conventions to make way for new inventions at once providing greater clarity and widening mathematical horizons. Viewed from this historical perspective, mathematical abstraction emerges as neither mysterious nor immutable, but as a contingent, developing human activity. Making up Numbers will be of great interest to undergraduate and A-level students of mathematics, as well as secondary school teachers of the subject. In virtue of its detailed treatment of mathematical ideas, it will be of value to anyone seeking to learn more about the development of the subject.

Interfaces between language and cognition: metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication

This thesis explores metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication, and their connection to the cognitive processes that are involved in language comprehension and production. Focusing on the English language, this thesis discusses the idea that linguistic metaphors reflect deeper conceptualisations of the world, which are expressed multimodally through metaphoric and iconic gesture, prosody, and vocalization. It also studies the representation of these metaphors in cultural artifacts, like line graphs, and how these representations can make data visualizations easier to comprehend. By focusing on number metaphors and then expanding its scope to include numerical communication more broadly, this thesis explores how communication about numbers reflects numerical cognition. It also argues that sensorimotor simulation motivates iconic and metaphoric expression in different modalities, and discusses the implications of this argument for language evolution. By synthesising insights from a wide range of research areas and methodologies from across the spectrum of linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology, this thesis demonstrates that metaphor, iconicity, and multimodal numerical communication are interfaces between language and cognition

Space Communications: Theory and Applications. Volume 3: Information Processing and Advanced Techniques. A Bibliography, 1958 - 1963

Annotated bibliography on information processing and advanced communication techniques - theory and applications of space communication