Computer Engineering Research Research Articles

Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare

Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but now they work to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations. Farm animals are a critical part of sustainable agriculture today, and there is increasing consumer interest in humanely raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint. Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and shrinking and compromised habitats. There are many reasons, including societal and economic ones, to explore how new computing technologies can be used to ensure the welfare of animals in these settings. The goal of this review is to systematically survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for domestic, farm, and wild animal welfare. We use a broad notion of animal welfare to refer to an assessment of whether animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and positively stimulated in their environment. Smart computing and sensing is also used in broad terms, to refer to systems that are not isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote data collection, processing, exchange, and analysis. The findings of this review are expected to motivate future research in computer science and engineering, as well as contribute to data, information, and communication management for animal welfare.

Mathematics ++: selected topics beyond the basic courses

Mathematics++ is a concise introduction to six selected areas of 20th century mathematics providing numerous modern mathematical tools used in contemporary research in computer science, engineering, and other fields. The areas are: measure theory, high-dimensional geometry, Fourier analysis, representations of groups, multivariate polynomials, and topology. For each of the areas, the authors introduce basic notions, examples, and results. The presentation is clear and accessible, stressing intuitive understanding, and it includes carefully selected exercises as an integral part. Theory is complemented by applications-some quite surprising-in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics. The chapters are independent of one another and can be studied in any order. It is assumed that the reader has gone through the basic mathematics courses. Although the book was conceived while the authors were teaching Ph.D. students in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, it will be useful for a much wider audience, such as mathematicians specializing in other areas, mathematics students deciding what specialization to pursue, or experts in engineering or other fields.

What Is the Distance Between Objects in a Data Set?: A Brief Review of Distance and Similarity Measures for Data Analysis.

Digitally recorded data have become another critical natural resource in our current research environment. This reality is one of the tremendous victories for decades of research in computer engineering, computer science, electronics, and communications. While this scenario will continue to be the case in the future, our current era has also marked the beginning of another unstoppable activity that is intimately related to digitally stored data: extracting knowledge and information from such data. Digital data are recorded in different forms and at unprecedented scales. Examples include database tables in every business entity; Tweets; e-mails and text documents; audio and speech signals; seismic data (recorded as temporal multidimensional tensors); video data (possibly stored with other modalities such as audio and captions); graphs representing relations and interactions among different entities (links among web documents, users on social networks, devices on computer networks, or gene interaction networks); and images, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and more. Because of their different forms and structures, throughout this article, each datum in a data set will be referred to as an object.Digitally recorded data have become another critical natural resource in our current research environment. This reality is one of the tremendous victories for decades of research in computer engineering, computer science, electronics, and communications. While this scenario will continue to be the case in the future, our current era has also marked the beginning of another unstoppable activity that is intimately related to digitally stored data: extracting knowledge and information from such data. Digital data are recorded in different forms and at unprecedented scales. Examples include database tables in every business entity; Tweets; e-mails and text documents; audio and speech signals; seismic data (recorded as temporal multidimensional tensors); video data (possibly stored with other modalities such as audio and captions); graphs representing relations and interactions among different entities (links among web documents, users on social networks, devices on computer networks, or gene interaction networks); and images, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and more. Because of their different forms and structures, throughout this article, each datum in a data set will be referred to as an object.

Innovative Mobile Information Systems: Insights from Gulf Cooperation Countries and All Over the World

Mobile Information Systems and applications have received growing attention in recent years from various perspectives. The thriving numbers behind mobile systems adoption and contribution have captured the attention of computer engineering and business researchers that, in the past years, have been trying to decipher the phenomenon of mobile information systems, its relation to already-conducted research, and its implications for new research opportunities that effect innovation, entrepreneurship, and world economy dynamics. The current mobile information systems and applications show cases in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries landscape and worldwide presenting a very interesting picture. Several big scale information systems provide a variety of services to local citizens and foreigners promoting top quality research towards the enhancement of the local economies and their transformation to knowledge based high effective sustainable economies. These widely accepted mobile information systems endeavors demonstrate that a wide range of mobile applications are available and present a viable and robust alternative to traditional desktop stand-alone solutions. The objective of the special issue is to communicate and disseminate recent computer engineering and business research and success stories that demonstrate the power of mobile computing to improve traditional information technologies and their exploitation approaches. The purpose of the special issue is to demonstrate state-of-the-art approaches of mobile information systems that have had successful application and to show how new and advanced business models and adoption strategies can expand the sustainability frontiers in advanced applied computer engineering and update the global agenda of innovations in mobile information systems and applications.

Iris recognition of driver 40 feet away through side view mirror

Electrical and Computer Engineering and CyLab Associate Research Professor Marios Savvides has demonstrated a long-range iris recognition system developed in his lab in a Youtube video.

Gaining the Broad Expertise Needed for High-End Computational Science and Engineering Research

Leadership-class systems can enable breakthroughs in science, but to use them productively requires significant expertise. There's a need to disseminate this expertise to potential users from a broader set of fields. A community effort aims to lower the barriers of entry to using these powerful machines by training the next-generation of high-performance computing users.

Macroscopic/Mesoscopic Computational Materials Science Modeling and Engineering

The goal of this special issue is to provide the platform for international discussion and exchange of information/ experience on the simulation of phenomena in and characteristics of materials at macroscopic and mesoscopic scales. In particular, these publications are the exhibitions and wide materials science and engineering of innovative, improved, and elegant research in macroscopic and/or mesoscopic computational materials science and engineering, containing the most advanced mathematical modeling methods and numerical methodology developments. For the sake of investigation of phenomena in materials science modeling and engineering at the macroscopic and mesoscopic scales, several powerful numerical tools, including first principle calculations, quantum molecular dynamics, molecular dynamics and molecular mechanics simulations, Monte Carlo method, finite element method, finite difference method, finite volume method, spectral element method, boundary element method, and computational fluid dynamics, are employed. Meanwhile, these tools are also applied on the research of materials (fluids, metals, polymers, rocks, ceramics, composites, biomaterials, nanomaterials, etc.), their structures (functional solids, soft matter, multiphase materials, tribology, coatings, etc.), and their characteristics (thermal, electronic, energetic, physical, structural, chemical, magnetic, or optical properties or a complicated combination of any of these properties). The analytical and numerical analyses and results of functional elements of these materials constitute the main and outstanding highlights of this special issue; moreover, important computational studies of others aspects also are brilliant and impressive, such as imperfections in materials and their resulting limitations, novel processes for advanced materials synthesis, engineering of material properties, environmental consideration in material performance, and solid materials on sintering/melting process during three-dimensional printing. It enables interdisciplinary collaboration between science and engineering technologists in the academic and industrial fields.

Advances in Finite Element Method 2014

1AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China 2Zienkiewicz Centre for Computational Engineering & Energy Safety Research Institute, College of Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK 3School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 4State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

R&D ekes out an increase in FY 2015 budget request

With spending caps in place, President Obama proposes an off-budget fund to support additional R&D. NASA would ground a flying observatory, and DOE would sharply curtail its nonproliferation programs.

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Smart and Reconfigurable Antenna Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks

1 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, RF Electronics and Antennas Research Lab, Yeditepe University, 34755 Istanbul, Turkey 2Department of Computer Engineering, Wireless Communications and Information Systems Research Unit, Kocaeli University, Izmit, 41380 Kocaeli, Turkey 3 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway 4Drexel Wireless System Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

A Performance Analysis of Task Scheduling Algorithms using Qualitative Parameters

A CPU is the very important part of the computer system; hence it must be utilized efficiently. When the demand for computing power increases, then scheduling problem becomes very important. The problem of task scheduling and load balancing are most important and challenging area of research in computer engineering. Task scheduling can be defined as allocating processes to processor so that total execution time will be minimized, utilization of processors will be optimized. Load balancing is the process of improving the performance of system through a redistribution of load among processor. In this paper, the performance analysis of various task scheduling algorithms based on different qualitative parameters is presented. The analysis indicates that task scheduling algorithms have some advantages as well as disadvantages. The main purpose of this paper is to help in design of new scheduling algorithms in future by studying existing task scheduling algorithms.

Writers’ self-representation in academic writing: The case of computer engineering research articles by English versus Iranian writers

It is widely acknowledged that academic writing is not just about communicating an ideational content; it is also about the representation of self. The purpose of this study was to investigate the tendency of Iranian and American writers for self-representation which is realized by means of writers’ explicit (first person self-references) and implicit self (imperative forms and attitude markers) in computer engineering research articles. In this study, 40 published research articles written in English by Iranian and American academics were analyzed to determine the distribution of first person pronouns, imperative forms and attitude markers. We have also examined the semantic references of plural pronoun ‘we’ as inclusive or exclusive according to their functions. The results indicated that both groups presented themselves both explicitly and implicitly. In addition, in the light of the results, it is evident that Iranian writers utilized explicit 'self' more than American writers did, whereas American writers made use of implicit 'self' more than Iranian scholars.

Modest but uneven R&D increases proposed for FY 2013

Uncertainty created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 clouds the outlook for federal science and technologyfunding. Some Department of Energyphysics programs face significant cuts.

Smart Grid & Security [Guest Editoral

There is a major growth in electrical and computer engineering research focused squarely on what has become known as the smart grid. While formal definitions of the smart grid do exist, the concept has grown to include technologies that span virtually all areas of electrical and computer engineering impacting energy sustainability, consumer response, electrification of transportation, and related areas. This is primarily due to the strong dependence on communication, control, and computing capabilities that support new growth in electric power and energy resources and technologies. The emergence of cyberphysical systems broadly captures the essence of this interdependence and has provided a rich theoretical basis for characterizing the challenges associated with maintaining critical assets while optimizing performance.

Metadiscursive Distinction between Persian and English: An Analysis of Computer Engineering Research Articles

The study tried to discover disciplinary distinctions between Persian and English in the academic genre. The focus was on the use of metadiscourse in the discipline of computer engineering research articles across the two languages. The selected corpus was analyzed through the model suggested by Hyland and Tse (2004). The results demonstrated that the two languages are distinct in their use of metadiscourse in the discipline studied. It was found that Persian, unlike English, relied on interactive resources more. The disciplinary distinction indicates that Persian computer engineering provides more textual elements while English language values a reader responsible trend.

Cloud computing for small research groups in computational science and engineering: current status and outlook

Cloud computing could offer good business models for small computational science and engineering (CSE) research groups because these groups often do not have enough human resources and knowledge to manage the complexity of computational and data infrastructure for their research, while cloud computing aims to eliminate that complexity from the user. In this paper, we have analyzed current status of supporting tools for small CSE groups to utilize cloud computing. Although cloud computing is perceived as an interesting model, we have identified several issues that prevent a wide adoption of cloud computing from small CSE research groups. We also present recommendations for addressing these issues in order to attract small CSE groups to utilize cloud computing.

From Random Polygon to Ellipse: An Eigenanalysis

Suppose x and y are unit 2-norm n-vectors whose components sum to zero. Let ${\cal P}(x,y)$ be the polygon obtained by connecting $(x_{1},y_{1}),\ldots,(x_{n},y_{n}),(x_{1},y_{1})$ in order. We say that $\widehat{{\cal P}}(\widehat{x},\widehat{y})$ is the normalized average of ${\cal P}(x,y)$ if it is obtained by connecting the midpoints of its edges and then normalizing the resulting vertex vectors $\widehat{x}$ and $\widehat{y}$ so that they have unit 2-norm. If this process is repeated starting with ${\cal P}_{0} = {\cal P}(x^{(0)},y^{(0)})$, then in the limit the vertices of the polygon iterates ${\cal P}(x^{(k)},y^{(k)})$ converge to an ellipse ${\cal E}$ that is centered at the origin and whose semiaxes are tilted forty-five degrees from the coordinate axes. An eigenanalysis together with the singular value decomposition is used to explain this phenomenon. The problem and its solution is a metaphor for matrix-based research in computational science and engineering.

Signal Processing for Neural Spike Trains

Signal Processing for Neural Spike Trains

Application Design for Wearable Computing

The confluence of decades of computer science and computer engineering research in multimodal interaction (e.g., speech and gesture recognition), machine learning (e.g., classification and feature extraction), software (e.g., web browsers, distributed agents), electronics (e.g., energy-efficient microprocessors, head-mounted displays), design methodology in user-centered design, and rapid prototyping have enabled a new class of computerswearable computers. The lecture takes the viewpoint of a potential designer or researcher in wearable computing. Designing wearable computers requires attention to many different factors because of the computers closeness to the body and its use while performing other tasks. For the purposes of discussion, we have created the UCAMP framework, which consists of the following factors: user, corporal, attention, manipulation, and perception. Each of these factors and their importance is described. A number of example prototypes developed by the authors, as well as by other researchers, are used to illustrate these concepts. Wearable computers have established their first foothold in several application domains, such as vehicle and aircraft maintenance and manufacturing, inspection, language translation, and other areas.