An overview of the self-organizing map algorithm, on which the papers in this issue are based, is presented in this article.

The Self-Organizing Map

Molecular self-assembly is the spontaneous association of molecules under equilibrium conditions into stable, structurally well-defined aggregates joined by noncovalent bonds. Molecular self-assembly is ubiquitous in biological systems and underlies the formation of a wide variety of complex biological structures. Understanding self-assembly and the associated noncovalent interactions that connect complementary interacting molecular surfaces in biological aggregates is a central concern in structural biochemistry. Self-assembly is also emerging as a new strategy in chemical synthesis, with the potential of generating nonbiological structures with dimensions of 1 to 10(2) nanometers (with molecular weights of 10(4) to 10(10) daltons). Structures in the upper part of this range of sizes are presently inaccessible through chemical synthesis, and the ability to prepare them would open a route to structures comparable in size (and perhaps complementary in function) to those that can be prepared by microlithography and other techniques of microfabrication.

Molecular self-assembly and nanochemistry: A chemical strategy for the synthesis of nanostructures

International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2003の要求清浄度について － シリコンウエハ表面と雰囲気環境に要求される清浄度, 分析方法の現状について －

The present inventions, in one aspect, are directed to a portable activity monitoring device comprising a housing having a physical size and shape that is adapted to couple to the user's body, a plurality of sensors (for example, motion sensor and altitude sensor) disposed in the housing. The monitoring device may further include processing circuitry, disposed in the housing and electrically coupled to the plurality of sensor, to calculate the activity points corresponding to the physical activity of the user using the sensor data, wherein the activity points correlate to an amount and intensity of the physical activity of the user, and output the data which is representative of the activity points. The monitoring device may also include a display, coupled to the processing circuitry, may output the data which is representative of the activity points to the user.

Portable monitoring devices and methods of operating same

Mobile health is an emerging field which is attracting much attention. Nevertheless, tools for the development of mobile health applications are lacking. This work presents mHealthDroid, an open source Android implementation of a mHealth Framework designed to facilitate the rapid and easy development of biomedical apps. The framework is devised to leverage the potential of mobile devices like smartphones or tablets, wearable sensors and portable biomedical devices. The framework provides functionalities for resource and communication abstraction, biomedical data acquisition, health knowledge extraction, persistent data storage, adaptive visualization, system management and value-added services such as intelligent alerts, recommendations and guidelines.

mHealthDroid: A Novel Framework for Agile Development of Mobile Health Applications

Mobile devices and embedded devices need more processing power but energy consumption should be less to save battery power. Open Handset Alliance (OHA) hosting members like Google, Motorola, HTC etc released an open source platform Android for mobile devices. Android is also used in netbook and embedded platform. Android runs on top of linux kernel with a custom JVM set on top of it. Android uses new power management framework to save power in mobile devices. Android developers are allowed to build only JAVA applications. Google tries to make Android as energy efficient as possible to save battery power in mobile devices. In this work, we present benefits of using Android in low power embedded devices. We compared Android JAVA performance with popular Sun embedded JVM running on top of Angstrom linux. Our work shows that Android provides better VM designs but consumes more energy due to lack of dynamic compiler in Dalvik JVM. The implication is that, Android can become more energy efficient by implementing an optimized dynamic compiler in Dalvik JVM.

Android on Mobile Devices: An Energy Perspective

Methods and apparatuses for estimating a user's altitude with respect to the mean sea level are provided. According to some aspects, the present invention is able to estimate altitude in both open sky as well as in degraded GPS signal environments such as dense urban canyon environments where GPS performance is affected by fewer available satellites and/or multipath error. According to other aspects, the present invention uses data from a pressure sensor to estimate altitude, either with or without the use of GPS aiding data. According to further aspects, estimated altitude is integrated with other types of dead reckoning data to provide user context detection pertaining to changes of altitude.

Methods and applications for altitude measurement and fusion of user context detection with elevation motion for personal navigation systems

Architecture and Security of SCADA Systems: A Review

OBJECT The surgical corridor to the upper third of the clivus and ventral brainstem is hindered by critical neurovascular structures, such as the cavernous sinus, petrous apex, and tentorium. The traditional Kawase approach provides a 10 × 5–mm fenestration at the petrous apex of the temporal bone between the 5th cranial nerve and internal auditory canal. Due to interindividual variability, sometimes this area proves to be insufficient as a corridor to the posterior cranial fossa. The authors describe a modification to the technique of the extradural anterior petrosectomy consisting of additional transcavernous exploration and medial mobilization of the cisternal component of the trigeminal nerve. This approach is termed the modified Dolenc-Kawase (MDK) approach. METHODS The authors describe a volumetric analysis of temporal bones with 3D laser scanning of dry and drilled bones for respective triangles and rhomboid areas, and they compare the difference of exposure with traditional versus modified approac...

Quantitative analysis of the Kawase versus the modified Dolenc-Kawase approach for middle cranial fossa lesions with variable anteroposterior extension

This technical note proposes a procedure to control an uncertain discrete-time networked system using an aperiodic stabilizing input information. The system is primarily affected by the time-varying, norm bounded, mismatched parametric uncertainty. Aperiodic exchange of information is done due to bandwidth constraint of the communication network. An event-triggered based robust control strategy is adopted to reduce the effects of system uncertainty in such bandwidth constrained networks. In event-triggered control, the control input is computed and actuated at the system end only when a pre-specified event condition is violated. The robust control input is derived to stabilize the uncertain system by solving an optimal control problem based on a virtual nominal dynamics and a modified cost-functional. It is shown that the robust control law with aperiodic information ensures input-to-state stability (ISS) of the original system in the presence of mismatched uncertainty. Deriving the event-triggering condition for a discrete-time uncertain system and ensuring the stability of such system analytically are the key contributions of this technical note. A numerical example is given to prove the efficacy of the proposed event-based control algorithm over the conventional periodic one.

Kolin Paul

Papers

Android on Mobile Devices: An Energy Perspective

Methods and applications for altitude measurement and fusion of user context detection with elevation motion for personal navigation systems

Architecture and Security of SCADA Systems: A Review

Quantitative analysis of the Kawase versus the modified Dolenc-Kawase approach for middle cranial fossa lesions with variable anteroposterior extension

Stabilization of Uncertain Discrete-Time Linear System With Limited Communication