31 research outputs found

    Micro-fabricated flexible PZT cantilever using d33 mode for energy harvesting

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    Abstract This paper presents a micro-fabricated flexible and curled PZT [Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3] cantilever using d33 piezoelectric mode for vibration based energy harvesting applications. The proposed cantilever based energy harvester consists of polyimide, PZT thin film, and inter-digitated IrOx electrodes. The flexible cantilever was formed using bulk-micromachining on a silicon wafer to integrate it with ICs. The d33 piezoelectric mode was applied to achieve a large output voltage by using inter-digitated electrodes, and the PZT thin film on polyimide layer has a remnant polarization and coercive filed of approximately 2P r  = 47.9 μC/cm2 and 2E c  = 78.8 kV/cm, respectively. The relative dielectric constant was 900. The fabricated micro-electromechanical systems energy harvester generated output voltages of 1.2 V and output power of 117 nW at its optimal resistive load of 6.6 MΩ from its resonant frequency of 97.8 Hz with an acceleration of 5 m/s2

    Multiprocessor SoC design methods and tools

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    Task-level Timed-functional Simulation for Multi-core Embedded Systems

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    Abstract—Since the design validation and correction cost is drastically increasing as the design steps proceed, software verification is considerably desired before the simulation model for the target architecture is constructed. As timing correctness is as important as functional correctness in real-time multimedia embedded systems, an important research issue is how to perform timed functional simulation with reasonable accuracy on a host machine. In addition, to allow design space exploration, a simulation platform should reflect hardware architectures, task mapping, and the scheduling policy for an operating system. To meet these requirements, we propose a timed functional simulator assuming that an application behavior is specified by a task graph. While the previous works usually resort to an eventdriven simulator for timed simulation, the proposed technique separates data communication and timing management. Since the simulation kernel manages the timing and task scheduling, the simulation speed approaches to that of a functional simulator. The proposed simulation consists of two steps: preliminary and timing simulation. First, preliminary simulation is performed to profile the data size of each task execution. Then, timing simulation is executed to verify the timing correctness of the application with the profiled data size. Experiment results show that the proposed timed functional simulation approach is very fast enough for early verification of embedded software design. Keywords- Task model; multi-processor; timing simulation; functional simulation; multi-task; embedded software I

    “Safety” and “integration”: examining the introduction of disaster into the science curriculum in South Korea

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    The diversifying impacts of global disasters such as climate change and COVID-19 call for systematic consideration of how disasters can be addressed in different school subjects. In this paper, we discuss how the relationship between disaster and science education has been codified and framed in South Korea through an analysis of national curriculum and policy documents in the 2010s, a period marked by several human-caused disasters with lingering social impacts. A genealogical reading of policy documents reveals how disaster emerged as a curricular theme at the intersection of two policy discourses: the discourse of safety and the discourse of integration. Further analysis of the documents points to three tensions about science education that underlay this process, as disaster, a non-traditional topic, was introduced into the science curriculum. Our findings provide insights into the tensions and conflicting ideas about what should be learned in school science. We contend that a stronger theoretical and empirical base is needed when introducing new curriculum topics such as disaster into the curriculum. More effort is needed to justify the new topic against the existing aims and structures of school subjects, to consider the unique social and political context, and to bridge the gap between curriculum policy and classroom practice

    Tailoring Pressure Sensitive Adhesives with H6XDI-PEG Diacrylate for Strong Adhesive Strength and Rapid Strain Recovery

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    The development of flexible electronic technology has led to convenient devices, including foldable displays, wearable, e-skin, and medical devices, increasing the need for flexible adhesives that can quickly recover their shape while connecting the components of the device. Conventional pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) can improve recoverability via crosslinking, but often have poor adhesive strength. In this study, new types of urethane-based crosslinkers are synthesized using m-xylylene diisocyanate (XDI) or 1,3-bis(isocyanatomethyl)cyclohexane (H6XDI) as a hard segment, and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) group as a soft segment. The PSA with the synthesized H6XDI-PEG diacrylate (HPD) demonstrates a significantly improved recoverability compared to XDI-PEG diacrylate and a conventional crosslinker 1,6-hexanediol diacrylate (HDDA) while maintaining high adhesion strength (& AP;25.5 N 25 mm(-1)). The excellent recovery property of the PSA crosslinked with HPD is further confirmed by 100k folding tests and 10k multi-directional stretching tests exhibiting high folding and stretching stability. PSA with HPD also shows high optical transmittance (> 90%) even after 20% straining, suggesting its applicability in fields that simultaneously require high flexibility, recoverability, and optical clarity such as foldable displays

    Effect of Climatic Factors on Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease in South Korea, 2010-2013.

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    Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) causes characteristic blisters and sores mainly in infants and children, and has been monitored in South Korea through sentinel surveillance since 2009. We described the patterns of HFMD occurrence and analyzed the effect of climatic factors on national HFMD incidence. Weekly clinically diagnosed HFMD case rates (per 1,000 outpatients) in sentinel sites and weekly climatic factors, such as average temperature, relative humidity, duration of sunshine, precipitation, and wind speed from 2010 to 2013, were used in this study. A generalized additive model with smoothing splines and climatic variables with time lags of up to 2 weeks were considered in the modeling process. To account for long-term trends and seasonality, we controlled for each year and their corresponding weeks. The autocorrelation issue was also adjusted by using autocorrelation variables. At an average temperature below 18°C, the HFMD rate increased by 10.3% for every 1°C rise in average temperature (95% confidence interval (CI): 8.4, 12.3%). We also saw a 6.6% increase in HFMD rate (95% CI: 3.6, 9.7%) with every 1% increase in relative humidity under 65%, with a 1.5% decrease in HFMD rate observed (95% CI: 0.4, 2.7%) with each 1% humidity increase above 65%. Modeling results have shown that average temperature and relative humidity are related to HFMD rate. Additional research on the environmental risk factors of HFMD transmission is required to understand the underlying mechanism between climatic factors and HFMD incidence

    A task remapping technique for reliable multi-core embedded systems

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    With the continuous scaling of semiconductor technology, the life-time of circuit is decreasing so that processor failure becomes an important issue in MPSoC design. A software solution to tolerate run-time processor failure is to migrate tasks from the failed processors to the live processors when failure occurs. Previous works on run-time task migration usually aim to minimize the migration overhead with or without a given latency constraint. For streaming applications, however, it is more important to minimize the throughput degradation than the migration overhead or the latency. Hence, we propose a task remapping technique to minimize the throughput degradation assuming that the migration overhead can be amortized safely. The target multi-core system assumed in this paper consists of processor pools and each pool consists of homogeneous processors. The proposed technique is based on an intensive compile-time analysis for all possible failure scenarios. It involves the following steps; 1) Determine the static mapping of tasks onto the live processors, aiming to minimize the throughput degradation: 2) Find an optimal processor-to-processor mapping to minimize the task migration overhead: and 3) Store the resultant task remapping information that includes task mapping and processor-to-processor mapping results. Since the task remapping information is pre-computed at compile-time for all possible failure scenarios, it should be efficiently represented and stored. At run-time, we simply remap the tasks following the compile-time decision. We examine the scalability of the proposed technique on both space and run-time overhead for compile-time analysis varying the number of failed processors. Through intensive experiments, we show that the proposed technique outperforms the previous works with respect to application throughput

    Effective Delivery of Endogenous Antioxidants Ameliorates Diabetic Nephropathy

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    <div><p>Background</p><p>Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is thought to be partially due to the injury of renal cells and the renal micro-environment by free radicals. Free radial scavenging agents that inhibit free radical damage may well prevent the development of underlying conditions such as mesangial expansion (by inhibiting extracellular matrix expression) in these patients.</p><p>Methods</p><p>Using techniques for intra-cellular delivery of peptides, we made metallothionein (MT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), potent endogenous antioxidants, readily transducible into cell membrane and tested their protective effect against the development of DN in OLETF rats. Herein, we study antioxidant peptides for their ability to prevent oxidative damage to primary rat mesangial cells (MCs), which are important constituents of renal glomeruli.</p><p>Results</p><p>Intraperitoneal administration of these antioxidants resulted in delivery to the kidney and decreased ROS and the expression of downstream signals in renal cells and postponed the usual progression to DN. In <i>in vitro</i> experiments, MT and SOD were efficiently transferred to MCs, and the increased removal of ROS by MT and SOD was proportional to the degree of scavenging enzymes delivered. MT and SOD decreased three major oxidative injuries (hyperglycemia, AGE and ROS exposure) and also injuries directly mediated by angiotensin II in MCs while changing downstream signal transduction.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>The protective effects of MT and SOD for the progression of DN in experimental animals may be associated with the scavenging of ROS by MT and SOD and correlated changes in signal transduction downstream. Concomitant administration of these antioxidant peptides may prove to be a new approach for the prevention and therapy of DN.</p></div
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