The Discontinuity of Cultural Process in the Digital Civilization. Main Dangers

Keynote presentation on ETHICOMP2001.

Diagnóstico Molecular na era da sequenciação de 3ª geração e da PCR digital

Projeto de Pós-Graduação/Dissertação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências Farmacêuticas

Medicina Dentária Digital – Presente e Futuro

Projeto de Pós-Graduação/Dissertação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Medicina Dentária

A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation

This volume is devoted to the broad topic of distributed digital preservation, a still-emerging field of practice for the cultural memory arena. Replication and distribution hold out the promise of indefinite preservation of materials without degradation, but establishing effective organizational and technical processes to enable this form of digital preservation is daunting. Institutions need practical examples of how this task can be accomplished in manageable, low-cost ways."--P. [4] of cover

The print block and the digital cylinder

Purpose – To consider the economic and physical impact of electronic journals on remotely stored print stock. Design/methodology/approach – A collection of print journals was used as an object for consideration. Physical and heritage aspects of the collection are examined and questions are posed regarding the wisdom of future retention in response to increased demand for electronic alternatives. Findings – Emerging trends predict a predominance of periodical literature in electronic form. The future of local remote storage for low demand printed journal collections needs to be evaluated in economic as well as cultural terms. Research limitations/implications – Based on a collection at the Boole Library, University College Cork, Ireland. Practical implications – Similar consideration should be given to collections in other regional libraries. Originality/value – Contributes to discussions on the long-term value of retaining print journal holdings.

Hardware reduction in digital delta-sigma modulators via error masking - part I: MASH DDSM

Two classes of techniques have been developed to whiten the quantization noise in digital delta-sigma modulators (DDSMs): deterministic and stochastic. In this two-part paper, a design methodology for reduced-complexity DDSMs is presented. The design methodology is based on error masking. Rules for selecting the word lengths of the stages in multistage architectures are presented. We show that the hardware requirement can be reduced by up to 20% compared with a conventional design, without sacrificing performance. Simulation and experimental results confirm theoretical predictions. Part I addresses MultistAge noise SHaping (MASH) DDSMs; Part II focuses on single-quantizer DDSMs..

The role of synchronization in digital communications using chaos - Part II: Chaotic modulation and chaotic synchronization.

For pt. I see ibid., vol. 44, p. 927-36 (1997). In a digital communications system, data are transmitted from one location to another by mapping bit sequences to symbols, and symbols to sample functions of analog waveforms. The analog waveform passes through a bandlimited (possibly time-varying) analog channel, where the signal is distorted and noise is added. In a conventional system the analog sample functions sent through the channel are weighted sums of one or more sinusoids; in a chaotic communications system the sample functions are segments of chaotic waveforms. At the receiver, the symbol may be recovered by means of coherent detection, where all possible sample functions are known, or by noncoherent detection, where one or more characteristics of the sample functions are estimated. In a coherent receiver, synchronization is the most commonly used technique for recovering the sample functions from the received waveform. These sample functions are then used as reference signals for a correlator. Synchronization-based coherent receivers have advantages over noncoherent receivers in terms of noise performance, bandwidth efficiency (in narrow-band systems) and/or data rate (in chaotic systems). These advantages are lost if synchronization cannot be maintained, for example, under poor propagation conditions. In these circumstances, communication without synchronization may be preferable. The theory of conventional telecommunications is extended to chaotic communications, chaotic modulation techniques and receiver configurations are surveyed, and chaotic synchronization schemes are described

Users & use: An exploration of the interaction between the user and the digital archive

This thesis will examine the interaction between the user and the digital archive. The aim of the study is to support an in-depth examination of the interaction process, with a view to making recommendations and tools, for system designers and archival professionals, to promote digital archive domain development. Following a comprehensive literature review process, an urgent requirement for models was identified. The Model of Contextual Interaction presented in this thesis, aims to provide a conceptual model through which the interaction process, between the user and the digital archive, can be examined. Using the five-phased research development framework, the study will present a structured account of its methods, using a multi-method methodology to ensuring robust data collection and analysis. The findings of the study are presented across the Model of Contextual Interaction, and provide a basis on which recommendations and tools for system designers have been made. The thesis concludes with a summary of key findings, and a reflective account of how the findings and the Model of Contextual Interaction have impacted digital provision within the archive domain and how the model could be applied to other domains.

Digital signal processing and artificial intelligence for the automated classification of food allergy

As a by-product of the ‘information revolution’ which is currently unfolding, lifetimes of man (and indeed computer) hours are being allocated for the automated and intelligent interpretation of data. This is particularly true in medical and clinical settings, where research into machine-assisted diagnosis of physiological conditions gains momentum daily. Of the conditions which have been addressed, however, automated classification of allergy has not been investigated, even though the numbers of allergic persons are rising, and undiagnosed allergies are most likely to elicit fatal consequences. On the basis of the observations of allergists who conduct oral food challenges (OFCs), activity-based analyses of allergy tests were performed. Algorithms were investigated and validated by a pilot study which verified that accelerometer-based inquiry of human movements is particularly well-suited for objective appraisal of activity. However, when these analyses were applied to OFCs, accelerometer-based investigations were found to provide very poor separation between allergic and non-allergic persons, and it was concluded that the avenues explored in this thesis are inadequate for the classification of allergy. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is known to provide very significant diagnostic information for many conditions. Owing to this, electrocardiograms (ECGs) were recorded during OFCs for the purpose of assessing the effect that allergy induces on HRV features. It was found that with appropriate analysis, excellent separation between allergic and nonallergic subjects can be obtained. These results were, however, obtained with manual QRS annotations, and these are not a viable methodology for real-time diagnostic applications. Even so, this was the first work which has categorically correlated changes in HRV features to the onset of allergic events, and manual annotations yield undeniable affirmation of this. Fostered by the successful results which were obtained with manual classifications, automatic QRS detection algorithms were investigated to facilitate the fully automated classification of allergy. The results which were obtained by this process are very promising. Most importantly, the work that is presented in this thesis did not obtain any false positive classifications. This is a most desirable result for OFC classification, as it allows complete confidence to be attributed to classifications of allergy. Furthermore, these results could be particularly advantageous in clinical settings, as machine-based classification can detect the onset of allergy which can allow for early termination of OFCs. Consequently, machine-based monitoring of OFCs has in this work been shown to possess the capacity to significantly and safely advance the current state of clinical art of allergy diagnosis

Interaction of additive and quantization noises in digital PLLs

Phase-locked loops (PLLs) are a crucial component in modern communications systems. Comprising of a phase-detector, linear filter, and controllable oscillator, they are widely used in radio receivers to retrieve the information content from remote signals. As such, they are capable of signal demodulation, phase and carrier recovery, frequency synthesis, and clock synchronization. Continuous-time PLLs are a mature area of study, and have been covered in the literature since the early classical work by Viterbi [1] in the 1950s. With the rise of computing in recent decades, discrete-time digital PLLs (DPLLs) are a more recent discipline; most of the literature published dates from the 1990s onwards. Gardner [2] is a pioneer in this area. It is our aim in this work to address the difficulties encountered by Gardner [3] in his investigation of the DPLL output phase-jitter where additive noise to the input signal is combined with frequency quantization in the local oscillator. The model we use in our novel analysis of the system is also applicable to another of the cases looked at by Gardner, that is the DPLL with a delay element integrated in the loop. This gives us the opportunity to look at this system in more detail, our analysis providing some unique insights into the variance `dip' seen by Gardner in [3]. We initially provide background on the probability theory and stochastic processes. These branches of mathematics are the basis for the study of noisy analogue and digital PLLs. We give an overview of the classical analogue PLL theory as well as the background on both the digital PLL and circle map, referencing the model proposed by Teplinsky et al. [4, 5]. For our novel work, the case of the combined frequency quantization and noisy input from [3] is investigated first numerically, and then analytically as a Markov chain via its Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. The resulting delay equation for the steady-state jitter distribution is treated using two separate asymptotic analyses to obtain approximate solutions. It is shown how the variance obtained in each case matches well to the numerical results. Other properties of the output jitter, such as the mean, are also investigated. In this way, we arrive at a more complete understanding of the interaction between quantization and input noise in the first order DPLL than is possible using simulation alone. We also do an asymptotic analysis of a particular case of the noisy first-order DPLL with delay, previously investigated by Gardner [3]. We show a unique feature of the simulation results, namely the variance `dip' seen for certain levels of input noise, is explained by this analysis. Finally, we look at the second-order DPLL with additive noise, using numerical simulations to see the effects of low levels of noise on the limit cycles. We show how these effects are similar to those seen in the noise-free loop with non-zero initial conditions.

Design of digital differentiators

A digital differentiator simply involves the derivation of an input signal. This work includes the presentation of first-degree and second-degree differentiators, which are designed as both infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filters and finite-impulse-response (FIR) filters. The proposed differentiators have low-pass magnitude response characteristics, thereby rejecting noise frequencies higher than the cut-off frequency. Both steady-state frequency-domain characteristics and Time-domain analyses are given for the proposed differentiators. It is shown that the proposed differentiators perform well when compared to previously proposed filters. When considering the time-domain characteristics of the differentiators, the processing of quantized signals proved especially enlightening, in terms of the filtering effects of the proposed differentiators. The coefficients of the proposed differentiators are obtained using an optimization algorithm, while the optimization objectives include magnitude and phase response. The low-pass characteristic of the proposed differentiators is achieved by minimizing the filter variance. The low-pass differentiators designed show the steep roll-off, as well as having highly accurate magnitude response in the pass-band. While having a history of over three hundred years, the design of fractional differentiator has become a ‘hot topic’ in recent decades. One challenging problem in this area is that there are many different definitions to describe the fractional model, such as the Riemann-Liouville and Caputo definitions. Through use of a feedback structure, based on the Riemann-Liouville definition. It is shown that the performance of the fractional differentiator can be improved in both the frequency-domain and time-domain. Two applications based on the proposed differentiators are described in the thesis. Specifically, the first of these involves the application of second degree differentiators in the estimation of the frequency components of a power system. The second example concerns for an image processing, edge detection application.

Error recovery in cyberphysical digital microfluidic biochips

Droplet-based digital microfluidics technology has now come of age, and software-controlled biochips for healthcare applications are starting to emerge. However, today's digital microfluidic biochips suffer from the drawback that there is no feedback to the control software from the underlying hardware platform. Due to the lack of precision inherent in biochemical experiments, errors are likely during droplet manipulation; error recovery based on the repetition of experiments leads to wastage of expensive reagents and hard-to-prepare samples. By exploiting recent advances in the integration of optical detectors (sensors) into a digital microfluidics biochip, we present a physical-aware system reconfiguration technique that uses sensor data at intermediate checkpoints to dynamically reconfigure the biochip. A cyberphysical resynthesis technique is used to recompute electrode-actuation sequences, thereby deriving new schedules, module placement, and droplet routing pathways, with minimum impact on the time-to-response. © 2012 IEEE.

Chemical and biological applications of digital-microfluidic devices

The advent of digital microfluidic lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology offers a platform for developing diagnostic applications with the advantages of portability, reduction of the volumes of the sample and reagents, faster analysis times, increased automation, low power consumption, compatibility with mass manufacturing, and high throughput. Moreover, digital microfluidics is being applied in other areas such as airborne chemical detection, DNA sequencing by synthesis, and tissue engineering. In most diagnostic and chemical-detection applications, a key challenge is the preparation of the analyte for presentation to the on-chip detection system. Thus, in diagnostics, raw physiological samples must be introduced onto the chip and then further processed by lysing blood cells and extracting DNA. For massively parallel DNA sequencing, sample preparation can be performed off chip, but the synthesis steps must be performed in a sequential on-chip format by automated control of buffers and nucleotides to extend the read lengths of DNA fragments. In airborne particulate-sampling applications, the sample collection from an air stream must be integrated into the LoC analytical component, which requires a collection droplet to scan an exposed impacted surface after its introduction into a closed analytical section. Finally, in tissue-engineering applications, the challenge for LoC technology is to build high-resolution (less than 10 microns) 3D tissue constructs with embedded cells and growth factors by manipulating and maintaining live cells in the chip platform. This article discusses these applications and their implementation in digital-microfluidic LoC platforms. © 2007 IEEE.

Magnetophoretic circuits for digital control of single particles and cells.

The ability to manipulate small fluid droplets, colloidal particles and single cells with the precision and parallelization of modern-day computer hardware has profound applications for biochemical detection, gene sequencing, chemical synthesis and highly parallel analysis of single cells. Drawing inspiration from general circuit theory and magnetic bubble technology, here we demonstrate a class of integrated circuits for executing sequential and parallel, timed operations on an ensemble of single particles and cells. The integrated circuits are constructed from lithographically defined, overlaid patterns of magnetic film and current lines. The magnetic patterns passively control particles similar to electrical conductors, diodes and capacitors. The current lines actively switch particles between different tracks similar to gated electrical transistors. When combined into arrays and driven by a rotating magnetic field clock, these integrated circuits have general multiplexing properties and enable the precise control of magnetizable objects.