A new, fast response CO2 sensor

The inability of emissions reduction methods to meet upcoming legislation without an unacceptable increase in vehicle cost is a major problem of automobile manufacturer. This work aims to develop a cost-effective reduction of automobile emissions. A prototype CO2 sensor with 5 msec response time was built and bench tested, then used on an engine. The sensor design was based on standard emissions measurement technology using non-dispersive IR absorption. An improved sensor has now been completed with significant improvements in terms of signal to noise ratio and long-term stability. The improved sensor will be used to measure CO2 concentrations on three different engines. The results will then be used to validate engine and catalyst models and to propose control strategies aimed at reducing overall emissions. A brief description of the sensor itself was presented. Original is an abstract.

Starting-up roadmapping fast

Technology roadmapping is a powerful technique for supporting technology management and planning in the firm. The roadmap enables the evolution of markets, products and technologies to be explored, together with the linkages between the various perspectives. A process called T-Plan, which has been developed to support the rapid initiation of roadmapping and thus address these challenges is described.

Fast and compact simulation models for a variety of FET nano devices by the CMOS EKV equations

In this paper we explore the possibility of using the equations of a well known compact model for CMOS transistors as a parameterized compact model for a variety of FET based nano-technology devices. This can turn out to be a practical preliminary solution for system level architectural researchers, who could simulate behaviourally large scale systems, while more physically based models become available for each new device. We have used a four parameter version of the EKV model equations and verified that fitting errors are similar to those when using them for standard CMOS FET transistors. The model has been used for fitting measured data from three types of FET nano-technology devices obeying different physics, for different fabrication steps, and under different programming conditions. © 2009 IEEE NANO Organizers.

Fast evolution of growth hormone receptor in primates and ruminants

Pituitary growth hormone (GH) evolves very slowly in most of mammals, but the evolutionary rates appear to have increased markedly on two occasions during the evolution of primates and ruminants. To investigate the evolutionary pattern of growth hormone receptor (GHR), we sequenced the extracellular domain of GHR genes from four primate species. Our results suggested that GHR in mammal also shows an episodic evolutionary pattern, which is consistent with that observed in pituitary growth hormone. Further analysis suggested that this pattern of rapid evolution observed in primates and ruminants is likely the result of coevolution between pituitary growth hormone and its receptor.

BarraCUDA – a Fast Sequence Mapping Software using Graphics Processing Units

High-throughput DNA sequencing (HTS) instruments today are capable of generating millions of sequencing reads in a short period of time, and this represents a serious challenge to current bioinformatics pipeline in processing such an enormous amount of data in a fast and economical fashion. Modern graphics cards are powerful processing units that consist of hundreds of scalar processors in parallel in order to handle the rendering of high-definition graphics in real-time. It is this computational capability that we propose to harness in order to accelerate some of the time-consuming steps in analyzing data generated by the HTS instruments. We have developed BarraCUDA, a novel sequence mapping software that utilizes the parallelism of NVIDIA CUDA graphics cards to map sequencing reads to a particular location on a reference genome. While delivering a similar mapping fidelity as other mainstream programs , BarraCUDA is a magnitude faster in mapping throughput compared to its CPU counterparts. The software is also capable of supporting multiple CUDA devices in parallel to further accelerate the mapping throughput. BarraCUDA is designed to take advantage of the parallelism of GPU to accelerate the mapping of millions of sequencing reads generated by HTS instruments. By doing this, we could, at least in part streamline the current bioinformatics pipeline such that the wider scientific community could benefit from the sequencing technology. BarraCUDA is currently available at http://seqbarracuda.sf.net