Computer Engineering Education

Computer engineering is a rapidly evolving discipline. How should we teach it to our students? This virtual roundtable on computer engineering education was conducted in summer 2022 over a combination of email and virtual meetings. The panel considered what topics are of importance to the computer engineering curriculum, what distinguishes computer engineering from related disciplines, and how computer engineering concepts should be taught

Collaborative research: CSR---EHS: foundations for design and implementation of software radio platforms

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundatio

ESPecIaL an Embedded Systems Programming Language

Nowadays embedded systems, available at very low cost, are becoming more and more present in many fields such as industry, automotive and education. This master thesis presents a prototype implementation of an embedded systems programming language. This report focuses on a high-level language, specially developed to build embedded applications, based on the dataflow paradigm. Using ready-to-use blocks, the user describes the block diagram of his application, and its corresponding C++ code is generated automatically, for a specific target embedded system. With the help of this prototype Domain Specific Language (DSL), implemented using the Scala programming language, embedded applications can be built with ease. Low-level C/C++ codes are no more necessary. Real-world applications based on the developed Embedded Systems Programming Language are presented at the end of this document

Isotopic and genetic methods reveal the role of the gut microbiome in mammalian host essential amino acid metabolism.

Intestinal microbiota perform many functions for their host, but among the most important is their role in metabolism, especially the conversion of recalcitrant biomass that the host is unable to digest into bioavailable compounds. Most studies have focused on the assistance gut microbiota provide in the metabolism of carbohydrates, however, their role in host amino acid metabolism is poorly understood. We conducted an experiment on Mus musculus using 16S rRNA gene sequencing and carbon isotope analysis of essential amino acids (AAESS) to quantify the community composition of gut microbiota and the contribution of carbohydrate carbon used by the gut microbiome to synthesize AAESS that are assimilated by mice to build skeletal muscle tissue. The relative abundances of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes inversely varied as a function of dietary macromolecular content, with Firmicutes dominating when mice were fed low-protein diets that contained the highest proportions of simple carbohydrates (sucrose). Mixing models estimated that the microbial contribution of AAESS to mouse muscle varied from less than 5% (threonine, lysine, and phenylalanine) to approximately 60% (valine) across diet treatments, with the Firmicute-dominated microbiome associated with the greatest contribution. Our results show that intestinal microbes can provide a significant source of the AAESS their host uses to synthesize structural tissues. The role that gut microbiota play in the amino acid metabolism of animals that consume protein-deficient diets is likely a significant but under-recognized aspect of foraging ecology and physiology

Ethics, Safety, and Autonomous Vehicles

This roundtable explores the ethical and safety implications of the rapidly evolving technology of autonomous vehicles

Towards A Generic, Service-Oriented Framework for Distributed Real-Time Systems

REACTION 2012. 1st International workshop on Real-time and distributed computing in emerging applications. December 4th, 2012, San Juan, Puerto Rico.Continuously increasing complexity and scale of distributed real-time systems have exposed the limitations of their existing development methodologies. This fact is evident by the unsustainable rate of increase in the development and maintenance costs of such systems. In this paper, we present a generic, service-oriented framework for distributed real-time systems. The proposed framework can potentially serve as the basis for a widely applicable, cross-domain toolset, thus, decreasing the development and maintenance costs for distributed real-time systems. The proposed framework consists of a generic, service-oriented deployment platform that abstracts away the details of implementation platform and an associated development methodology. The proposed framework makes extensive use of the existing service-oriented technologies such as Web Services. However, it also extends these technologies for application to distributed real-time systems by introducing QoS-aware service deployment and service monitoring phases. This paper presents the details of the proposed framework as well as a case-study of the application of the proposed framework to the domain of smart gri

Physical Activity Training for Functional Mobility in Older Persons

The effectiveness of low-intensity physical activity for improving functional ability and psycho logical well-being in chronically impaired older individuals was demonstrated in a pilot study. Participants who completed 6 weeks of structured low-intensity exercise (N = 77) improved in the time and number of steps required to walk a measured course, in self-assessments of mobility and flexibility, and in three measures of well-being. Those who continued to exercise in a peer-led program (n = 32) maintained improvements in mobility and optimism after 18 weeks.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68101/2/10.1177_073346489501400401.pd