Design of a power-aware digital image rejection receiver

This paper deals with and details the design of a power-aware adaptive digital image rejection receiver based on blind-source-separation that alleviates the RF analog front-end impairments. Power-aware system design at the RTL level without having to redesign arithmetic circuits is used to reduce the power consumption in nomadic devices. Power-aware multipliers with configurable precision are used to trade-off the image-rejection-ratio (IRR) performance with power consumption. Results of the simulation case studies demonstrate that the IRR performance of the power-aware system is comparable to that of the normal implementation albeit degraded slightly, but well within the acceptable limits.

Detection of MegaTAL-induced HIV pol Mutation By Droplet Digital PCR

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015

Theorising and analysing digital labour: from global value chains to modes of production

This paper considers the following question—where do computers, laptops and mobile phones come from and who produced them? Specific cases of digital labour are examined—the extraction of minerals in African mines under slave-like conditions; ICT manufacturing and assemblage in China (Foxconn); software engineering in India; call centre service work; software engineering at Google within Silicon Valley; and the digital labour of internet prosumers/users. Empirical data and empirical studies concerning these cases are systematically analysed and theoretically interpreted. The theoretical interpretations are grounded in Marxist political economy. The term ‘global value chain’ is criticised in favour of a complex and multidimensional understanding of Marx’s ‘mode of production’ for the purposes of conceptualizing digital labour. This kind of labour is transnational and involves various modes of production, relations of production and organisational forms (in the context of the productive forces). There is a complex global division of digital labour that connects and articulates various forms of productive forces, exploitation, modes of production, and variations within the dominant capitalist mode of production.

Construction studies in higher education and the use of digital technology

The construction industry wants graduate employees skilled in relationship building and information technology and communications (ITC). Much of the relationship building at universities has evolved through technology. Government and the ITC industry fund lobby groups to influence both educational establishments and Government to incorporate more ITC in education _ and ultimately into the construction industry. This influencing ignores the technoskeptics’ concerns about student disengagement through excessive online distractions. Construction studies students (n=64) and lecturers (n=16) at a construction university were surveyed to discover the impact of the use and applications of ITC. Contrary to Government and industry technopositivism, construction students and lecturers preferred hard copy documents to online feedback for assignments and marking, more human interface and less technological substitution and to be on campus for lectures and face-to-face meetings rather than viewing on-screen. ITC also distracted users from tasks which, in the case of students, prevented the development of the concentration and deep thinking which a university education should deliver. The research findings are contrary to the promotions of Government, ITC industry and ITC departments and have implications for construction employers where a renewed focus on human communication should mean less stress, fewer delays and cost overruns.

Against divisiveness: Digital workers of the world unite! A rejoinder to César Bolaño and Eloy Vieira

This piece is a short rejoinder to César Bolaño’s paper The Political Economy of the Internet and related articles (e.g., Comor, Foley, Huws, Reveley, Rigi and Prey, Robinson) that center around the relevance of Marx’s labor theory of value for understanding social media. I argue that Dallas Smythe’s assessment of advertising was made to distinguish his approach from the one by Baran and Sweezy. Smythe developed the idea of capital’s exploitation of the audience at a time when both feminist and anti-imperialist Marxists challenged the orthodox idea that only white factory workers are exploited. The crucial question is how to conceptualize productive labor. This is a theoretical, normative, and political question. A mathematical example shows the importance of the “crowdsourcing” of value-production on Facebook. I also point out parallels of the contemporary debate to the Soviet question of who is a productive or unproductive worker in the Material Product System.

Georg Lukács as a Communications Scholar: Cultural and Digital Labour in the Context of Lukács’ Ontology of Social Being

The task of this work is to apply thoughts from Georg Lukács’ final book, the Ontology of Social Being, for the theoretical analysis of cultural and digital labour. It discusses Lukács’ concepts of work and communication and relates them to the analysis of cultural and digital work. It also analyses his conception of the relation of labour and ideology and points out how we can make use of it for critically understanding social media ideologies. Lukács opposes the dualist separation of the realms of work and ideas. He introduces in this context the notion of teleological positing that allows us to better understand cultural and digital labour as well as associated ideologies, such as the engaging/connecting/sharing-ideology, today. The analysis shows that Lukács’ Ontology is in the age of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter still a very relevant book, although it has thus far not received the attention that it deserves. This article also introduces the Ontology’s main ideas on work and culture, which is important because large parts of the book have not been translated from the German original into English. Lukács’ notion of teleological positing is crucial for understanding the common features of the economy and culture.

Alienation and Digital Labour – a Depth-Hermeneutic Inquiry into Online Commodification and the Unconscious

At the core of this paper is a psychosocial inquiry into the Marxist concept of alienation and its applications to the field of digital labour. Following a brief review of different theoretical works on alienation, it looks into its recent conceptualisations and applications to the study of online social networking sites. Finally, the authors offer suggestions on how to extend and render more complex these recent approaches through in-depth analyses of Facebook posts that exemplify how alienation is experienced, articulated, and expressed online. For this perspective, the article draws on Rahel Jaeggi’s (2005) reassessment of alienation, as well as the depth-hermeneutic method of “scenic understanding” developed by Alfred Lorenzer (e.g. 1970; 1986).

Cyborg Subjects: Discourses on Digital Culture

This book is an interrogation of humanity's new potentials and threats brought by technology when the question of social change is becoming more crucial than ever. Collected in the course of 2010-2012, the selected essays in this anthology confront questions from a wide-ranging perspective that evoke the postmodern idea of the cyborg to illuminate recent phenomena from global warming, Wikileaks, to the Occupy movements. Multiple disciplines from music to psychoanalysis to journalism to anthropology collaborate to examine the way we shape the world from behind our ubiquitous screens to taking to the streets in mass protests. What does the increasing omnipotence of networked machines ultimately mean? What do social networks do to our sense of self, others and society? Does P2P technology foster new ethics and spiritualities? What potentials does posthumanity have to bring about social change? Featuring essays from Robert Barry, Siri Driessen & Roos van Haaften, Bonni Rambatan, Dustin Cohen, Jacob Johanssen, Michel Bauwens, Aliki Tzatha, Zakary Paget, Stefen Baack, Alessandro Zagato, Peter Nikolaus Funke, Glenn Muschert, and Jung-Hua Liu.

Median Filter Architecture by Accumulative Parallel Counters

The time to process each of the W/B processing blocks of a median calculation method on a set of N W-bit integers is improved here by a factor of three compared with literature. The parallelism uncovered in blocks containing B-bit slices is exploited by independent accumulative parallel counters so that the median is calculated faster than any known previous method for any N, W values. The improvements to the method are discussed in the context of calculating the median for a moving set of N integers, for which a pipelined architecture is developed. An extra benefit of a smaller area for the architecture is also reported.