Connexions: Create Globally, Educate Locally

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PostersFounded in 1999, Connexions (http://cnx.org/) was built upon the philosophy that high-quality, open-licensed scholarly materials can revolutionize the way we think about education. Built upon a core of open software and driven by innovators in the open education movement, Connexions has made it possible for authors worldwide to publish content that teachers and learners can rip, mix, and burn to develop customized learning solutions at no cost. Authors create learning objects, called modules, that can be assembled into online courses, printed textbooks, or academic journals. All content in the Connexions repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license, giving educators the tools and materials necessary to create unique works tailored to the needs of their students and colleagues. As the Connexions content repository continues to grow, traditional educational consumers will find themselves in a position to become producers, taking full advantage of the knowledge available in a global, digital society.Rice University; Hewlett Foundatio

Investigation of electrical contact resistance for nonconductive film functionalized with Π -conjugated self-assembled molecules

©2007 American Institute of Physics. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://link.aip.org/link/?APPLAB/90/092102/1DOI:10.1063/1.2709638Nonconductive adhesive/nonconductive film (NCA/NCF) bonding technology has attracted increasing research interests as lead-free interconnect. During bonding, heat and pressure are applied and the direct physical contacts between the two surfaces of integrated circuit bump and substrate bond pad can be achieved. The electrical contact resistance of a NCA/NCF joint is controlled by the pressure, roughness and NCA/NCF material properties. An accurate prediction of contact resistance can help guide experiment setup towards improving the electrical performance of NCA/NCF. In this study, a model is developed and correlated to experiments. The effects of NCA/NCF material properties on electrical contact resistance are investigated

Finsler Active Contours

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2007.70713In this paper, we propose an image segmentation technique based on augmenting the conformal (or geodesic) active contour framework with directional information. In the isotropic case, the euclidean metric is locally multiplied by a scalar conformal factor based on image information such that the weighted length of curves lying on points of interest (typically edges) is small. The conformal factor that is chosen depends only upon position and is in this sense isotropic. Although directional information has been studied previously for other segmentation frameworks, here, we show that if one desires to add directionality in the conformal active contour framework, then one gets a well-defined minimization problem in the case that the factor defines a Finsler metric. Optimal curves may be obtained using the calculus of variations or dynamic programming-based schemes. Finally, we demonstrate the technique by extracting roads from aerial imagery, blood vessels from medical angiograms, and neural tracts from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imagery

Blind deconvolution of medical ultrasound images: parametric inverse filtering approach

©2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2007.910179The problem of reconstruction of ultrasound images by means of blind deconvolution has long been recognized as one of the central problems in medical ultrasound imaging. In this paper, this problem is addressed via proposing a blind deconvolution method which is innovative in several ways. In particular, the method is based on parametric inverse filtering, whose parameters are optimized using two-stage processing. At the first stage, some partial information on the point spread function is recovered. Subsequently, this information is used to explicitly constrain the spectral shape of the inverse filter. From this perspective, the proposed methodology can be viewed as a ldquohybridizationrdquo of two standard strategies in blind deconvolution, which are based on either concurrent or successive estimation of the point spread function and the image of interest. Moreover, evidence is provided that the ldquohybridrdquo approach can outperform the standard ones in a number of important practical cases. Additionally, the present study introduces a different approach to parameterizing the inverse filter. Specifically, we propose to model the inverse transfer function as a member of a principal shift-invariant subspace. It is shown that such a parameterization results in considerably more stable reconstructions as compared to standard parameterization methods. Finally, it is shown how the inverse filters designed in this way can be used to deconvolve the images in a nonblind manner so as to further improve their quality. The usefulness and practicability of all the introduced innovations are proven in a series of both in silico and in vivo experiments. Finally, it is shown that the proposed deconvolution algorithms are capable of improving the resolution of ultrasound images by factors of 2.24 or 6.52 (as judged by the autocorrelation criterion) depending on the type of regularization method used

Author Identifiers in Scholarly Repositories

Bibliometric and usage-based analyses and tools highlight the value of information about scholarship contained within the network of authors, articles and usage data. Less progress has been made on populating and using the author side of this network than the article side, in part because of the difficulty of unambiguously identifying authors. I briefly review a sample of author identifier schemes, and consider use in scholarly repositories. I then describe preliminary work at arXiv to implement public author identifiers, services based on them, and plans to make this information useful beyond the boundaries of arXiv.Comment: 10 pages. Based on a presentation given at Open Repositories 200

An Intervening Ethical Governor for a Robot Mediator in Patient-Caregiver Relationships

© Springer International Publishing AG 2015DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-46667-5_6Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience challenges when interacting with caregivers due to their declining control over their musculature. To remedy those challenges, a robot mediator can be used to assist in the relationship between PD patients and their caregivers. In this context, a variety of ethical issues can arise. To overcome one issue in particular, providing therapeutic robots with a robot architecture that can ensure patients’ and caregivers’ dignity is of potential value. In this paper, we describe an intervening ethical governor for a robot that enables it to ethically intervene, both to maintain effective patient–caregiver relationships and prevent the loss of dignity

Passive Heat Sink For Dynamic Thermal Management Of Hot Spots

A fully-passive, dynamically configurable directed cooling system for a microelectronic device is disclosed. In general, movable pins are suspended within a cooling plenum between an active layer and a second layer of the microelectronic device. In one embodiment, the second layer is another active layer of the microelectronic device. The movable pins are formed of a material that has a surface tension that decreases as temperature increases such that, in response to a temperature gradient on the surface of the active layer, the movable pins move by capillary flow in the directions of decreasing temperature. By moving in the direction of decreasing temperature, the movable pins move away from hot spots on the surface of the active layer, thereby opening a pathway for preferential flow of a coolant through the cooling plenum at a higher flow rate towards the hot spots.Georgia Tech Research Corporatio

One-Handed Keyboards

Standard keyboards can be difficult to use for single-handed typists. They might find that typing is laborious, time consuming, and inefficient. Single-handed typists might range from having carpal tunnel in one hand, spasticity, limited motor control to a chronic irritation or loss of the fingers or the hand. When people think of solutions for single-handed typists, they tend to think in terms of alternate keyboards and keyboard layouts. However there are many additional products that will assist a one-handed user. One-handed keyboarding has many solutions and concerns to be considered. No single solution will fit all needs and preferences that individuals may have. As with any solution, exploring choices will point to the one most likely to meet individual needs. Preventing further injury and enabling proficiency at the keyboard are primary concerns and goals. Types of keyboards include chorded keyboards, right-handed/left-handed keyboards, hand-held keyboards and ergonomic keyboards

Thermal Protection Materials and High Temperature Composites for Planetary Entry Systems

This presentation was part of the session : Poster SessionsSixth International Planetary Probe WorkshopThe Boeing Company has a long history in developing Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) and designing and constructing high temperature aerostructures. Many space projects ranging from the first manned Mercury and Gemini missions through Apollo and continuing on with the Space Shuttle have been enabled through advanced research and development efforts. Currently advanced materials and construction techniques are being developed for applications beyond earth manned missions to include missions to Mars, the outer planets and their moons. This poster will present an overview of the various TPS Materials and High Temperature Composite structures currently in development and what their intended mission design performance requirements are

Ultra Wide Band Signal Generator

Disclosed is an ultra wide band signal generator. The ultra wide band signal generator generates a signal of a required frequency using a harmonic signal having a frequency range of a ultra wide band (UWB). The ultra wide band signal generator includes an active inductor for generating harmonic signals having power strengths substantially equal to each other within a non-linear operation range, the tunable active inductor capable of tuning a value thereof, an oscillator for amplifying and outputting the harmonic signals generated from the active inductor by frequency-transiting the harmonic signals into high frequency bands, and a filter for selectively outputting one of the harmonic signals output from the oscillator.Samsung Electronics Co., LtdGeorgia Tech Research Corporatio