FPGA based High Speed ECG Signal Diagnosis for Artifacts

The paper is dedicated to the design of multiband digital FIR filter for removal of various interference signals present in the ECG signal which does not allow the correct diagnosis of the patient. Filtering is finding its applications in wide domains and one of those domains is the biomedical science. ECG is the electrical response of the heart with respect to time. Heart diseases especially heart attacks are way common today and to detect this very precise detailing is required. There is no scope for allowed interference level or noise which corrupts the signal. Seven band filter is designed which will remove the frequencies that are prone to disturbances i.e. the various spectral components where particular type of noise from different sources dominates like noise from power line, respiration, muscle movement etc. The filter is developed and designed in Matlab along with Xilinx DSP tools synthesized with XST using Spartan 6 and Virtex 5 as target device. Filter is optimized using DA based architecture to increase the speed and maximum area utilization is obtained. The processing speed is efficiently optimized up to 28.36% with Virtex 5 as compared to Spartan 6 with the maximum area utilization in the presented paper

Ethnicity and nation-building in South Asia : case studies of the Baluch movement in Pakistan and the Khalistan movement in India

This thesis examines the process of nation-building in South Asia, with particular reference to the Baluch in Pakistan and the Sikhs in India. The two movements stand in stark contrast to one another. The Baluch, a closed tribal community with low levels of socio-economic development represent a small ethnic group in Pakistan; while the Sikhs, a small religious minority, are a robust people with high levels of socio-economic development in India. But both desired a separate homeland for themselves. The thesis pursues two objectives. First, it analyses the factors responsible for the growth of separatist sentiments among the Baluch and the Sikhs, as well as the causes contributing to the decline of the respective movements. It explains these dynamics with the help of three variables: the nature of the movements, the policies of the Pakistani and Indian state, and the role of extemal powers. The period selected for the two case studies coincides with the rise, operation, and decay of the two movements. For the Baluch it ranges from 1971, the beginning of the civil war to 1981. In the case of Khalistan, it concentrates on the period from 1978 to 1992. Second, it examines the phenomenon of separatism in the larger context of state-building in South Asia, but more specifically India and Pakistan. It looks at the policies of both the Indian and Pakistani states in dealing with their ethnic minorities. The study does not subscribe to any one theory to explain the rise of the Baluch and Khalistan movements. Instead it adopts a trans-disciplinary approach using various schools of social anthropology and political science to understand separatism in the subcontinent

Reconfigurable Channel Interference Reduction for Vehicular Communication Applications

Vehicular Communication systems, an application of wireless communication is an increasing area of communication between the vehicles and other roadside infrastructure in which allocation of wireless channels are used to share information among vehicles and infrastructure and hence these channels are used for the development and implementation of vehicular communication systems. The 10 MHz wide channels in 5.9GHz spectrum band are reserved for this purpose by two main protocols the WAVE standards proposed by IEEE in the United States and ETSI ITS-G5 in Europe. But still the cross ?channel interference affect the vehicular communication systems. So to reduce these problems, this paper presents the implementation of two-stage low pass equiripple FIR filter, target to be integrated with digital baseband receiver chain of vehicular communication platform. The proposed filter has been developed using Matlab and Xilinx DSP Tools and implemented with XST software using Spartan 3E and Virtex 2p FPGA device to ensure the minimum delay generated in operation and to show the effectiveness of the proposed filter. The results show that the processing speed is efficiently optimized up to 19.70 % for stage 1 and 10.50 % for stage 2 using virtex 2p over Spartan 3E with maximum area utilization

Wildfire Prevention & Suppression System

The Bay area community has continually been at threat to wildfires. The current trend showed that wildfires would be an even more prevalent threat in the near future. Despite this, there still exists a lack of knowledge involving wildfire safety and protection for people’s property. Current systems were found to be too expensive, needed constant maintenance, or access to isolated storage of 1,000+ gallons of water. Through research of misting systems, the effectiveness of mist as a radiation shield, and working with members of CalFire, it was determined that the system needed to meet the following parameters to be effective and meaningfully implemented: (1) cost under $5,000 to develop, (2) The ability to maintain a minimum of 40$1,500

Experimental Comparison of Store-and-Forward and Wormhole NoC Routers for FPGA\u27s

Network on Chip (NoC) is an interconnection paradigm which is scalable and efficient for connecting increasing number of components on Field Programmable Systems on Chip (FPSOC). The router is a key component in NoC that impacts area performance, power consumption, etc. In this thesis we evaluate and compare two different router designs using real world benchmark. The first router uses Store-And-Forward strategy (SAF) and XY routing algorithm and the second router uses Wormhole (WH) as forwarding strategy and source routing algorithm. These routers were used to implement 4x4 mesh NoCs. A multi processor system benchmark obtained from Altera was implemented in each NoC. This enabled us to evaluate and compare the routers using the real world benchmark design. The evaluation metrics used were area, throughput, power consumption and maximum clock frequency. Experiment results show that the SAF router is superior to the WH Router

Medical Sciences 4300: London-Middlesex Suicide Prevention Council

Suicide is an issue that affects people of all backgrounds, and takes the lives of many individuals every year. The London-Middlesex Suicide Prevention Council (LMSPC), an organization established in 1990, seeks to provide suicide prevention training to members of the community. They seek to engage community members in prevention and intervention by recognizing warning signs that may exist among the London-Middlesex region. The three main programs that strive to deliver these skills are ASIST, ASK, and safeTALK, each with a slightly different focus. LMSPC’s current goal is to increase access to these services through external grants and potential partnerships. Our Community Engaged Learning (CEL) project aimed at creating a repository of grants to allow LMSPC to improve the targeting of their grant applications. Through these grants, the organization will be able to host more classes, and provide training at subsidized prices to increase community access. Additionally, this project worked to produce a series of infographics, which will hopefully increase education on myths regarding suicide, and the available training programs via LMSPC’s social media platforms. Online advocacy provides a point of first contact to potential participants of LMSPC’s three programs, and educates the community on the difficult truths of suicide. Although a lot of progress has been made over the past several months, the fight against suicide is far from over. Going forward, LMSPC will continue to strengthen partnerships, and grow their organization through external grants. Ultimately, this organization’s impacts are incredibly significant and far-reaching as they work to save lives, and make the London-Middlesex region a safer environment

Restoring large-scale brain networks in PTSD and related disorders: a proposal for neuroscientifically-informed treatment interventions

Background: Three intrinsic connectivity networks in the brain, namely the central executive, salience, and default mode networks, have been identified as crucial to the understanding of higher cognitive functioning, and the functioning of these networks has been suggested to be impaired in psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Objective: 1) To describe three main large-scale networks of the human brain; 2) to discuss the functioning of these neural networks in PTSD and related symptoms; and 3) to offer hypotheses for neuroscientificallyinformed interventions based on treating the abnormalities observed in these neural networks in PTSD and related disorders. Methods: Literature relevant to this commentary was reviewed. Results: Increasing evidence for altered functioning of the central executive, salience, and default mode networks in PTSD has been demonstrated. We suggest that each network is associated with specific clinical symptoms observed in PTSD, including cognitive dysfunction (central executive network), increased and decreased arousal/interoception (salience network), and an altered sense of self (default mode network). Specific testable neuroscientifically-informed treatments aimed to restore each of these neural networks and related clinical dysfunction are proposed. Conclusions: Neuroscientifically-informed treatment interventions will be essential to future research agendas aimed at targeting specific PTSD and related symptoms

Low-frequency connectivity is associated with mild traumatic brain injury

AbstractMild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) occurs from a closed-head impact. Often referred to as concussion, about 20% of cases complain of secondary psychological sequelae, such as disorders of attention and memory. Known as post-concussive symptoms (PCS), these problems can severely disrupt the patient's quality of life. Changes in local spectral power, particularly low-frequency amplitude increases and/or peak alpha slowing have been reported in mTBI, but large-scale connectivity metrics based on inter-regional amplitude correlations relevant for integration and segregation in functional brain networks, and their association with disorders in cognition and behaviour, remain relatively unexplored. Here, we used non-invasive neuroimaging with magnetoencephalography to examine functional connectivity in a resting-state protocol in a group with mTBI (n = 20), and a control group (n = 21). We observed a trend for atypical slow-wave power changes in subcortical, temporal and parietal regions in mTBI, as well as significant long-range increases in amplitude envelope correlations among deep-source, temporal, and frontal regions in the delta, theta, and alpha bands. Subsequently, we conducted an exploratory analysis of patterns of connectivity most associated with variability in secondary symptoms of mTBI, including inattention, anxiety, and depression. Differential patterns of altered resting state neurophysiological network connectivity were found across frequency bands. This indicated that multiple network and frequency specific alterations in large scale brain connectivity may contribute to overlapping cognitive sequelae in mTBI. In conclusion, we show that local spectral power content can be supplemented with measures of correlations in amplitude to define general networks that are atypical in mTBI, and suggest that certain cognitive difficulties are mediated by disturbances in a variety of alterations in network interactions which are differentially expressed across canonical neurophysiological frequency ranges