September 26, 2005

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

SOLID-STATE BASED THERMOELECTRIC DEVICES FOR COOLING AND HEATING

The project is basically to build an appropriate circuit for solid state thermoelectric cooler or heater. The circuitry is used to control the connection in coldmode and hot mode. The peltier device is fabricated by combining the standard n- and p- channel semiconductor material with a two-element field emission device inserted into each of the two channels to eliminate the solid-state thermal conductivity. In general, two important components building up the thermoelectric cooler or heater is the temperature controller using a microcontroller and peltier device that consists ofanntype and p-type semiconductors of bismuth-telluride (Bi Tei) connected by H-bridge circuitry. Both elements must be connected in such a way as to produce a heat sink and heat source that are portable and using small amount of power in the atmosphere of a car. For the microcontroller to work, a specific program is loaded and programmed inside thememory of the PIC 16F877. Theobjectives of this project are to have theoretical review on thermoelectric devices, search and learn the method of developing the device. The activities are mainly focused on design and simulation. All findings and the detailed analysis including key elements of the project, which is to decide the parameters, and the design procedure that should be used, will be conducted as to follow the overall concept ofthe project

University of Nevada, Las Vegas Transmutation Research Program: Annual Report Academic Year 2004-2005

It is my pleasure to present the UNLV Transmutation Research Program’s fourth annual report that highlights the academic year 2004 – 2005. Supporting this document are the many technical reports and scientific papers that have been generated over the past three years. In the fourth year of our program, we added 11 new research tasks and saw the conclusion of 8 of the initial 16 independent student research tasks started in 2001 and 2002. In all, the program has sponsored to their conclusion 28 M.S. and 2 Ph.D. degrees. The program supported 58 graduate students and 13 undergraduates in 6 academic departments across the UNLV scientific and engineering communities in the academic year 2004-2005. Our research tasks span the range of technology areas for transmutation, including separation of actinides from spent nuclear fuel, methods of fuel fabrication, reactoraccelerator coupled experiments, and corrosion of materials exposed to lead-bismuth eutectic

Success Factors Impacting Artificial Intelligence Adoption --- Perspective From the Telecom Industry in China

As the core driving force of the new round of informatization development and the industrial revolution, the disruptive achievements of artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly and comprehensively infiltrating into various fields of human activities. Although technologies and applications of AI have been widely studied, and factors that affect AI adoption are identified in existing literature, the impact of success factors on AI adoption remains unknown. Accordingly, the main study of this paper proposes a framework to explore the effects of success factors on AI adoption by integrating the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory. Particularly, this framework consists of factors regarding the external environment, organizational capabilities, and innovation attributes of AI. The framework is empirically tested with data collected by surveying telecom companies in China. Structural equation modeling is applied to analyze the data. The results indicate that compatibility, relative advantage, complexity, managerial support, government involvement, and vendor partnership are significantly related to AI adoption. Managerial capability impacts other organizational capabilities and innovation attributes of AI, but it is indirectly related to AI adoption. Market uncertainty and competitive pressure are not significantly related to AI adoption, but all the external environment factors positively influence managerial capability. The study provides support for firms\u27 decision-making and resource allocation regarding AI adoption. In addition, based on the resource-based view (RBV), this article conducts study 2 which explores the factors that influence the firm sustainable growth. Multiple regression model is applied to empirically test the hypotheses with longitudinal time-series panel data from telecom companies in China. The results indicate that at the firm level, the customer value and operational expenses are significantly related to sustainable growth. Also, at the industry level, industry investment significant impacts sustainable growth. Study 2 provides insights for practitioners the way to keep sustainable growth

"Spare me your medical mumbojumbo": A comparison among neural machine translation applications in the medical domain

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A Multimodal Technique for an Embedded Fingerprint Recognizer in Mobile Payment Systems

The development and the diffusion of distributed systems, directly connected to recent communication technologies, move people towards the era of mobile and ubiquitous systems. Distributed systems make merchant-customer relationships closer and more flexible, using reliable e-commerce technologies. These systems and environments need many distributed access points, for the creation and management of secure identities and for the secure recognition of users. Traditionally, these access points can be made possible by a software system with a main central server. This work proposes the study and implementation of a multimodal technique, based on biometric information, for identity management and personal ubiquitous authentication. The multimodal technique uses both fingerprint micro features (minutiae) and fingerprint macro features (singularity points) for robust user authentication. To strengthen the security level of electronic payment systems, an embedded hardware prototype has been also created: acting as self-contained sensors, it performs the entire authentication process on the same device, so that all critical information (e.g. biometric data, account transactions and cryptographic keys), are managed and stored inside the sensor, without any data transmission. The sensor has been prototyped using the Celoxica RC203E board, achieving fast execution time, low working frequency, and good recognition performance

Proceedings of the 11th Toulon-Verona International Conference on Quality in Services

The Toulon-Verona Conference was founded in 1998 by prof. Claudio Baccarani of the University of Verona, Italy, and prof. Michel Weill of the University of Toulon, France. It has been organized each year in a different place in Europe in cooperation with a host university (Toulon 1998, Verona 1999, Derby 2000, Mons 2001, Lisbon 2002, Oviedo 2003, Toulon 2004, Palermo 2005, Paisley 2006, Thessaloniki 2007, Florence, 2008). Originally focusing on higher education institutions, the research themes have over the years been extended to the health sector, local government, tourism, logistics, banking services. Around a hundred delegates from about twenty different countries participate each year and nearly one thousand research papers have been published over the last ten years, making of the conference one of the major events in the field of quality in services