Analyzing ChatGPT's Aptitude in an Introductory Computer Engineering Course

ChatGPT has recently gathered attention from the general public and academia as a tool that is able to generate plausible and human-sounding text answers to various questions. One potential use, or abuse, of ChatGPT is in answering various questions or even generating whole essays and research papers in an academic or classroom setting. While recent works have explored the use of ChatGPT in the context of humanities, business school, or medical school, this work explores how ChatGPT performs in the context of an introductory computer engineering course. This work assesses ChatGPT's aptitude in answering quizzes, homework, exam, and laboratory questions in an introductory-level computer engineering course. This work finds that ChatGPT can do well on questions asking about generic concepts. However, predictably, as a text-only tool, it cannot handle questions with diagrams or figures, nor can it generate diagrams and figures. Further, also clearly, the tool cannot do hands-on lab experiments, breadboard assembly, etc., but can generate plausible answers to some laboratory manual questions. One of the key observations presented in this work is that the ChatGPT tool could not be used to pass all components of the course. Nevertheless, it does well on quizzes and short-answer questions. On the other hand, plausible, human-sounding answers could confuse students when generating incorrect but still plausible answers.Comment: 6 page

Sustainable Use of Waste Banana Peel (Musa × sapientum L.) Powder for Enhancement of Nutritional Properties of Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate is a very popular confectionary product among children, made by combining cocoa (55%) with cocoa butter (7.5%) and sugar (42%) has high antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and free-radical scavenging properties. Chocolates also have a high concentration of cocoa and flavanols contents which is very beneficial for human health. The nutritional value of the dark chocolate samples prepared was further enhanced by using unripe banana peel powder. The peel of banana fruit is a waste material, but it also has antioxidant, antibacterial, and antibiotic properties which encourages its use in industries like pharmaceuticals. So, after considering the nutritional value of unripe banana fruit peel, the powder of unripe banana peel was added to the dark chocolate in the concentration of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9% to increase the nutritional value of dark chocolate. The premix powder containing iron, folic acid, and vitamin B12 was also added to the dark chocolate samples in the concentration of 2% in all the variants. The nutritional value of chocolate samples made by using unripe banana peel powder and premix increased significantly but the color of the product decreased significantly as the concentration of banana powder increased

Bioanalytical Method Development and Validation: A Review

For various types of drug approval processes like INDs, NDAs, ANDAs, veterinary drug approval, the data related to bioanalytical method development and validation is needed to sponsors. Various agencies namely US FDA, American association of pharmaceutical scientists (AAPS), Health protection Branch (HPB), Association of analytical chemists (AOAC), Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Food and drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), European Medicine Agency (EMA), China Food and Drug administration(CFDA), European Bioanalytical Forum (EBF), Global CRO council (GCC), ANVISA (Brazil), Japan Bioanalytical Forum (JBF) had done collective efforts at different timings to regulate and harmonize bioanalytical method development and validation

Hardware Architecture for a Quantum Computer Trusted Execution Environment

The cloud-based environments in which today's and future quantum computers will operate, raise concerns about the security and privacy of user's intellectual property. Quantum circuits submitted to cloud-based quantum computer providers represent sensitive or proprietary algorithms developed by users that need protection. Further, input data is hard-coded into the circuits, and leakage of the circuits can expose users' data. To help protect users' circuits and data from possibly malicious quantum computer cloud providers, this work presented the first hardware architecture for a trusted execution environment for quantum computers. To protect the user's circuits and data, the quantum computer control pulses are obfuscated with decoy control pulses. While digital data can be encrypted, analog control pulses cannot and this paper proposed the novel decoy pulse approach to obfuscate the analog control pulses. The proposed decoy pulses can easily be added to the software by users. Meanwhile, the hardware components of the architecture proposed in this paper take care of eliminating, i.e. attenuating, the decoy pulses inside the superconducting quantum computer's dilution refrigerator before they reach the qubits. The hardware architecture also contains tamper-resistant features to protect the trusted hardware and users' information. The work leverages a new metric of variational distance to analyze the impact and scalability of hardware protection. The variational distance of the circuits protected with our scheme, compared to unprotected circuits, is in the range of only $0.16$ to $0.26$. This work demonstrates that protection from possibly malicious cloud providers is feasible and all the hardware components needed for the proposed architecture are available today

An unusual presentation of nabothian cyst: a case report

Nabothian cysts are common gynecologic findings and rarely of clinical significance. They are not problematic unless they are sizeable and present secondary symptoms like in this case. Nabothian cysts are usually associated with chronic cervicitis, an inflammatory condition of cervix, and are harmless and usually disappear on their own. Here we report an interesting case of multiple large nabothian cysts presented with continuous, thin & copious watery discharge, a distressing symptom, mimicking genitourinary fistula. This case is reported for the rarity of symptoms of continuous copious thin watery discharge per vaginum. Very rarely nabothian cyst needs hysterectomy as in our case

SDitH in Hardware

This work presents the first hardware realisation of the Syndrome-Decodingin-the-Head (SDitH) signature scheme, which is a candidate in the NIST PQC process for standardising post-quantum secure digital signature schemes. SDitH’s hardness is based on conservative code-based assumptions, and it uses the Multi-Party-Computation-in-the-Head (MPCitH) construction. This is the first hardware design of a code-based signature scheme based on traditional decoding problems and only the second for MPCitH constructions, after Picnic. This work presents optimised designs to achieve the best area efficiency, which we evaluate using the Time-Area Product (TAP) metric. This work also proposes a novel hardware architecture by dividing the signature generation algorithm into two phases, namely offline and online phases for optimising the overall clock cycle count. The hardware designs for key generation, signature generation, and signature verification are parameterised for all SDitH parameters, including the NIST security levels, both syndrome decoding base fields (GF256 and GF251), and thus conforms to the SDitH specifications. The hardware design further supports secret share splitting, and the hypercube optimisation which can be applied in this and multiple other NIST PQC candidates. The results of this work result in a hardware design with a drastic reducing in clock cycles compared to the optimised AVX2 software implementation, in the range of 2-4x for most operations. Our key generation outperforms software drastically, giving a 11-17x reduction in runtime, despite the significantly faster clock speed. On Artix 7 FPGAs we can perform key generation in 55.1 Kcycles, signature generation in 6.7 Mcycles, and signature verification in 8.6 Mcycles for NIST L1 parameters, which increase for GF251, and for L3 and L5 parameters

SDitH in Hardware

This work presents the first hardware realisation of the Syndrome-Decoding-in-the-Head (SDitH) signature scheme, which is a candidate in the NIST PQC process for standardising post-quantum secure digital signature schemes. SDitH\u27s hardness is based on conservative code-based assumptions, and it uses the Multi-Party-Computation-in-the-Head (MPCitH) construction. This is the first hardware design of a code-based signature scheme based on traditional decoding problems and only the second for MPCitH constructions, after Picnic. This work presents optimised designs to achieve the best area efficiency, which we evaluate using the Time-Area Product (TAP) metric. This work also proposes a novel hardware architecture by dividing the signature generation algorithm into two phases, namely offline and online phases for optimising the overall clock cycle count. The hardware designs for key generation, signature generation, and signature verification are parameterised for all SDitH parameters, including the NIST security levels, both syndrome decoding base fields (GF256 and GF251), and thus conforms to the SDitH specifications. The hardware design further supports secret share splitting, and the hypercube optimisation which can be applied in this and multiple other NIST PQC candidates. The results of this work result in a hardware design with a drastic reducing in clock cycles compared to the optimised AVX2 software implementation, in the range of 2-4x for most operations. Our key generation outperforms software drastically, giving a 11-17x reduction in runtime, despite the significantly faster clock speed. On Artix 7 FPGAs we can perform key generation in 55.1 Kcycles, signature generation in 6.7 Mcycles, and signature verification in 8.6 Mcycles for NIST L1 parameters, which increase for GF251, and for L3 and L5 parameters

Implementation of ASK, PSK and FSK on FPGA

ABSTRACT This paper present the review on an implementation of ASK, PSK and FSK modulators and demodulators on FPGA using Quartus II software. The ASK,PSK and FSK modulators and demodulators system is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK environment ,DSP Builder and Quartus II. The DSP builder Signal Compiler block reads Simulink Model Files (.mdl) and writes out VHDL files and Tcl scripts for hardware implementation and simulation. Quartus II, a tool from altera used to implement the design on two Cyclone II Starter kit board. The first board behaves as a modulator and second as a demodulator. The modulated signal was achieved in the first Cyclone II board, passed through a channel and transmitted to the second board, which behaves as a demodulator. At the end of the demodulator, the modulating signal was obtained

STAR (Survey for ManagemenT of DiAbetes with FibeR-rich Nutrition Drink): A Pan India Survey to Understand the Physician and Patient Perspective Regarding the Role of Dietary Fiber Supplement in the Management of Type 2 Diabetes

Objectives: The aim of the STAR survey was to understand the physicians’ knowledge, attitude and perception regarding the role of nutritional dietary fiber supplements in the daily management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). It also aimed to compare the changes in glycemic parameters as well as energy and satiety levels between patients taking a high-fiber supplement and those not taking a fiber supplement. Methods: Two cross-sectional pan-India surveys were conducted. The first was among 152 physicians who had >5 years of experience in treating patients with T2DM and treated >50 patients with T2DM per month. A self-administered paper-based questionnaire was used for the survey. The other survey was conducted among 3,042 patients with T2DM who were receiving treatment with antidiabetics. These patients were further categorized into the Horlicks Diabetes Plus (HDP) group, which consisted of 1,524 patients who had consumed the HDP fiber supplement for a minimum of 3 months and the non-HDP group, which included 1,518 patients who had never consumed HDP. Results: Almost all physicians prescribed fiber-rich nutritional supplements to their patients with T2DM and believed that dietary fiber has an important role in managing glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) values, healthy weight and cholesterol levels. Among the main benefits of HDP seen by physicians were improvement in satiety levels and increase in physical activity, reduction in HbA1c, fasting and postprandial glucose, and reduction in dose and/or number of hypoglycemic medications. All physicians recommended that it was important to increase awareness among patients as well as doctors regarding the benefits of HDP in patients with T2DM. Patients in the HDP group reported a mean decrease of 0.72 in their HbA1c value which was statistically significant at 3 months (8.04 at baseline to 7.32 at 3 months). In contrast, the non-HDP group showed a non-statistically significant decrease of 0.61 in HbA1c from a baseline value of 8.15. Furthermore, patients reported a significant decrease in weight of 3 kg in 3 months from baseline value of 72.11 kg to 69.11 kg. This reduction in weight was observed in 82% patients in the HDP group, while the non-HDP group showed an insignificant weight reduction from a baseline value of 72.14 kg to 71.46 kg in 3 months. About 83% of patients reported feeling full for longer periods of time and 92.62% reported feeling more energetic after starting HDP. The compliance and satisfaction rates with HDP were 96% and 75%, respectively. Conclusion: A high-fiber supplement taken along with patients’ existing antidiabetic treatment plan has the potential to decrease glycemic parameters and weight while increase the satiety and energy levels among patients with T2DM. However, these results need to be evaluated further with long-term clinical studies conducted in the real world.&nbsp

Fast and Efficient Hardware Implementation of HQC

This work presents a hardware design for constant-time implementation of the HQC (Hamming Quasi-Cyclic) code-based key encapsulation mechanism. HQC has been selected for the fourth round of NIST\u27s Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process and this work presents the first, hand-optimized design of HQC key generation, encapsulation, and decapsulation written in Verilog targeting implementation on FPGAs. The three modules further share a common SHAKE256 hash module to reduce area overhead. All the hardware modules are parametrizable at compile time so that designs for the different security levels can be easily generated. The design currently outperforms the other hardware designs for HQC, and many of the fourth-round Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process, with one of the best time-area products as well. For the combined HighSpeed design targeting the lowest security level, we show that the HQC design can perform key generation in 0.09ms, encapsulation in 0.13ms, and decapsulation in 0.21ms when synthesized for an Xilinx Artix 7 FPGA. Our work shows that when hardware performance is compared, HQC can be a competitive alternative candidate from the fourth round of the NIST PQC competition