Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot Systems

The field of modular self-reconfigurable robotic systems addresses the design, fabrication, motion planning, and control of autonomous kinematic machines with variable morphology. Modular self-reconfigurable systems have the promise of making significant technological advances to the field of robotics in general. Their promise of high versatility, high value, and high robustness may lead to a radical change in automation. Currently, a number of researchers have been addressing many of the challenges. While some progress has been made, it is clear that many challenges still exist. By illustrating several of the outstanding issues as grand challenges that have been collaboratively written by a large number of researchers in this field, this article has shown several of the key directions for the future of this growing fiel

Screen-based musical instruments as semiotic machines

The ixi software project started in 2000 with the intention to explore new interactive patterns and virtual interfaces in computer music software. The aim of this paper is not to describe these programs, as they have been described elsewhere, but rather explicate the theoretical background that underlies the design of these screen-based instruments. After an analysis of the similarities and differences in the design of acoustic and screen-based instruments, the paper describes how the creation of an interface is essentially the creation of a semiotic system that affects and influences the musician and the composer. Finally the terminology of this semiotics is explained as an interaction model

Multiport VNA Measurements

This article presents some of the most recent multiport VNA measurement methodologies used to characterize these highspeed digital networks for signal integrity. There will be a discussion of the trends and measurement challenges of high-speed digital systems, followed by a presentation of the multiport VNA measurement system details, calibration, and measurement techniques, as well as some examples of interconnect device measurements. The intent here is to present some general concepts and trends for multiport VNA measurements as applied to computer system board-level interconnect structures, and not to promote any particular brand or produc

Guidance on personalised learning and the Cloud

A short manual for schools who wish to implement personalised learning

A fragmentising interface to a large corpus of digitized text: (Post)humanism and non-consumptive reading via features

While the idea of distant reading does not rule out the possibility of close reading of the individual components of the corpus of digitized text that is being distant-read, this ceases to be the case when parts of the corpus are, for reasons relating to intellectual property, not accessible for consumption through downloading followed by close reading. Copyright restrictions on material in collections of digitized text such as the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) necessitates providing facilities for non-consumptive reading, one of the approaches to which consists of providing users with features from the text in the form of small fragments of text, instead of the text itself. We argue that, contrary to expectation, the fragmentary quality of the features generated by the reading interface does not necessarily imply that the mode of reading enabled and mediated by these features points in an anti-humanist direction. We pose the fragmentariness of the features as paradigmatic of the fragmentation with which digital techniques tend, more generally, to trouble the humanities. We then generalize our argument to put our work on feature-based non-consumptive reading in dialogue with contemporary debates that are currently taking place in philosophy and in cultural theory and criticism about posthumanism and agency. While the locus of agency in such a non-consumptive practice of reading does not coincide with the customary figure of the singular human subject as reader, it is possible to accommodate this fragmentising practice within the terms of an ampler notion of agency imagined as dispersed across an entire technosocial ensemble. When grasped in this way, such a practice of reading may be considered posthumanist but not necessarily antihumanist.Ope

A Case Study Of E-Supply Chain & Business Process Reengineering Of A Semiconductor Company In Malaysia

Penglibatan e-perniagaan dalam rantaian bekalan telah mewujudkan e-rantaian bekalan yang baru (e-SC) di firma-firma tempatan dan global. Due to globalization and advancement in information technology (IT), companies adopt best practices in e-business and supply chain management to be globally competitive as both are realities and prospects in 21st century

Glider: A GPU Library Driver for Improved System Security

Legacy device drivers implement both device resource management and isolation. This results in a large code base with a wide high-level interface making the driver vulnerable to security attacks. This is particularly problematic for increasingly popular accelerators like GPUs that have large, complex drivers. We solve this problem with library drivers, a new driver architecture. A library driver implements resource management as an untrusted library in the application process address space, and implements isolation as a kernel module that is smaller and has a narrower lower-level interface (i.e., closer to hardware) than a legacy driver. We articulate a set of device and platform hardware properties that are required to retrofit a legacy driver into a library driver. To demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of library drivers, we present Glider, a library driver implementation for two GPUs of popular brands, Radeon and Intel. Glider reduces the TCB size and attack surface by about 35% and 84% respectively for a Radeon HD 6450 GPU and by about 38% and 90% respectively for an Intel Ivy Bridge GPU. Moreover, it incurs no performance cost. Indeed, Glider outperforms a legacy driver for applications requiring intensive interactions with the device driver, such as applications using the OpenGL immediate mode API

Revisiting context-aware component interconnection

Software connectors are external coordination devices which ensure the flow of data and enforce synchronization constraints within a component’s network. The specification of software connectors through which context dependent behaviour is correctly propagated remains an open, non trivial issue in their semantics. This paper, building on previous work by the authors, revisits this problem and introduces a model in which context awareness is suitably handled

Corpus language input, corpus processes in learning, learner corpus product. Introduction

International audienc