Cellulosic Biofuels

Cellulosic biofuels are not as far off as often assumed. EESI's investigation of this issue found some pilot scale cellulosic biofuel production facilities already online and many more demonstration and commercial scale biorefineries under construction or on the drawing board. In fact, 55 cellulosic biorefineries are complete, under construction or in the planning stage in a total of 31 states across the country, adding up to an expected nameplate capacity of 629.5 million gallons per year (MGY) and a potential expansion to 995 MGY. Most of the demonstration and commercial scale facilities are scheduled to start operation in 2009 or 2010

Delay Measurements and Self Characterisation on FPGAs

This thesis examines new timing measurement methods for self delay characterisation of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) components and delay measurement of complex circuits on FPGAs. Two novel measurement techniques based on analysis of a circuit's output failure rate and transition probability is proposed for accurate, precise and efficient measurement of propagation delays. The transition probability based method is especially attractive, since it requires no modifications in the circuit-under-test and requires little hardware resources, making it an ideal method for physical delay analysis of FPGA circuits. The relentless advancements in process technology has led to smaller and denser transistors in integrated circuits. While FPGA users benefit from this in terms of increased hardware resources for more complex designs, the actual productivity with FPGA in terms of timing performance (operating frequency, latency and throughput) has lagged behind the potential improvements from the improved technology due to delay variability in FPGA components and the inaccuracy of timing models used in FPGA timing analysis. The ability to measure delay of any arbitrary circuit on FPGA offers many opportunities for on-chip characterisation and physical timing analysis, allowing delay variability to be accurately tracked and variation-aware optimisations to be developed, reducing the productivity gap observed in today's FPGA designs. The measurement techniques are developed into complete self measurement and characterisation platforms in this thesis, demonstrating their practical uses in actual FPGA hardware for cross-chip delay characterisation and accurate delay measurement of both complex combinatorial and sequential circuits, further reinforcing their positions in solving the delay variability problem in FPGAs

Omics Approaches to Uncover Germline and Somatic Variation Underlying Inherited Sarcomagenesis

Sarcomas are rare mesenchymal tumors, making up 15% of all childhood and 1% of all adult tumors. They account for a disproportionate share of mortality in young adults, and if left untreated, are highly likely to metastasize. However, sarcoma etiology is poorly understood, and having numerous histological subtypes has complicated elucidation. To better understand factors underlying sarcomagenesis, we leveraged two rare inherited cancer predisposition syndromes, Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS), and LFS-like (LFSL), both with a high incidence of sarcomas. LFS is caused by mutations in the tumor suppressor gene TP53 (p53), but has variable and incomplete penetrance, suggesting additional acquired somatic mutations are necessary for tumorigenesis. In contrast, LFSL has no known cause, although a 10-Mb region in 1q23 has been mapped by linkage analysis as a putative LFSL locus. Therefore, to better identify genetic variation underlying LFS and LFSL we utilized a 2-pronged approach. First, we evaluated LFSL families for rare, co-segregating, germline mutations, which identified a mutation in ARHGAP30 that was present in four LFSL families. Moreover, this mutation impacted both proliferation and migration when overexpressed in vitro. Subsequent analysis of publicly available data indicates a potential role for ARHGAP30 in sporadic cancers. Secondly, we endeavored to identify somatically acquired drivers of sarcomagenesis. In cancer, passenger events are acquired concomitantly with driver mutations, and distinguishing them remains a key challenge. To best address this, we used a comparative genomics approach, leveraging a “humanized” mouse model of LFS with a hotspot mutation, Trp53R172H, analogous to TP53R175H in humans. Hypothesizing that sarcoma etiology is similar in humans and mice, we then catalogued recurrent changes in the genome, transcriptome, and methlyome. We found little overlap in any of the omics approaches across the human tumors, which came from diverse p53 mutations and sarcoma types, but found strong overlap in the mouse tumors (fibrosarcomas and osteosarcomas). Recurrent data discovered in the mouse was mirrored in some human sporadic mesenchymal tumors, including novel genes like MROH2A, and MIR219A2. Our results emphasize the utility of a model disorder and comparative omics to uncover genes with relevance for both inherited and sporadic tumors

Minimally Invasive 3D Printed Microneedles for Glucose Monitoring

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) provides an instantaneous real-time display of glucose level, rate of change of glucose, alerts, and alarms for actual or impending hypo- and hyperglycemia. Continuous glucose monitors are able to stay implanted on the patient anywhere from 7-14 days, giving patients and doctors valuable information to help improve patient care for diabetics, and providing them with a way to continuously monitor their blood glucose level concentration throughout the day. Conventional methods of glucose detection such as blood glucose meters require the patient to gather frequent blood samples to generate instantaneous results that are only accurate as of the time of day the reading was taken. These methods fail to take account of daily fluctuations in glucose levels that can arise from changes in diet and physical activity. In an effort to optimize cost, reliability, and accessibility, this paper proposes a minimally invasive continuous glucose monitoring system that is able to detect glucose levels in interstitial fluid through the use of solid 3D printed microneedles. This CGM device would provide an easily affordable, accessible, and pain-free option for diabetic patients. Providing patients with a way to continuously monitor their glucose levels allows for more personal involvement with their health decisions and ultimately serves as a guide toward more effective diabetes management

Studying Urbanism in Copenhagen

Travelling and learning from other places, cultures, and experiences is a fundamental aspect of education. Copenhagen, Denmark\u27s progressive capital and one of Europe\u27s most livable cities, has long been a laboratory for sustainable planning and design ideas. Seniors Laura Traffenstedt and Justin Wong comment on their experiences studying urbanism in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad - DIS

Live-Learn Cal Poly: A New-Urbanist Vision for a More Livable and Sustainable Campus

Universities across the nation have begun a mixed-use initiative in an effort to densify campuses and diversify retail and housing choices to increase student residency on campus. The movement to model the built environment after traditional mixed-use urbanism has been shown to improve capital flow within the local submarket on campus, foster flexible learning environments to support student success, and reduce automobile dependency. In order to reflect Cal Poly’s Master Plan moving forward, this report intends to follow the guiding principles outlined in the Master Plan while proposing sustainable and efficient land use designs to accommodate future growth at Cal Poly

OLIV: An Artificial Intelligence-Powered Assistant for Object Localization for Impaired Vision

This paper introduces OLIV, a novel end-to-end artificial intelligence-powered assistant system designed to aid individuals with impairedvision in their day-to-day tasks in locating displaced objects. Toachieve this goal, OLIV leverages the current advances in AI-basedspeech recognition, speech generation, and object detection to un-derstand the user’s request and give directions to the relative loca-tion of the displaced object. OLIV consists of three main modules:i) a speech module, ii) an object detection module, and iii) a logicunit module. The speech module interfaces with the user to inter-pret the verbal query of the user and verbally responds to the user.The object detection module identifies the objects of interest andtheir associated locations in a scene. Finally, the logic unit modulemakes sense of the user’s intent along with the localized objects ofinterest, and builds a semantic description that the user can under-stand for the speech module to convey verbally back to the user.Initial results from a proof-of-concept system trained to localize fourdifferent types of objects show promise to the feasibility of OLIV asa useful aid for individuals with impaired vision

Floodlight Quantum Key Distribution: A Practical Route to Gbps Secret-Key Rates

The channel loss incurred in long-distance transmission places a significant burden on quantum key distribution (QKD) systems: they must defeat a passive eavesdropper who detects all the light lost in the quantum channel and does so without disturbing the light that reaches the intended destination. The current QKD implementation with the highest long-distance secret-key rate meets this challenge by transmitting no more than one photon per bit [Opt. Express 21, 24550-24565 (2013)]. As a result, it cannot achieve the Gbps secret-key rate needed for one-time pad encryption of large data files unless an impractically large amount of multiplexing is employed. We introduce floodlight QKD (FL-QKD), which floods the quantum channel with a high number of photons per bit distributed over a much greater number of optical modes. FL-QKD offers security against the optimum frequency-domain collective attack by transmitting less than one photon per mode and using photon-coincidence channel monitoring, and it is completely immune to passive eavesdropping. More importantly, FL-QKD is capable of a 2 Gbps secret-key rate over a 50 km fiber link, without any multiplexing, using available equipment, i.e., no new technology need be developed. FL-QKD achieves this extraordinary secret-key rate by virtue of its unprecedented secret-key efficiency, in bits per channel use, which exceeds those of state-of-the-art systems by two orders of magnitude.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure