Custom Layouts Research Articles

EEG decoding for datasets with heterogenous electrode configurations using transfer learning graph neural networks

Objective. Brain-machine interfacing (BMI) has greatly benefited from adopting machine learning methods for feature learning that require extensive data for training, which are often unavailable from a single dataset. Yet, it is difficult to combine data across labs or even data within the same lab collected over the years due to the variation in recording equipment and electrode layouts resulting in shifts in data distribution, changes in data dimensionality, and altered identity of data dimensions. Our objective is to overcome this limitation and learn from many different and diverse datasets across labs with different experimental protocols. Approach. To tackle the domain adaptation problem, we developed a novel machine learning framework combining graph neural networks (GNNs) and transfer learning methodologies for non-invasive motor imagery (MI) EEG decoding, as an example of BMI. Empirically, we focus on the challenges of learning from EEG data with different electrode layouts and varying numbers of electrodes. We utilize three MI EEG databases collected using very different numbers of EEG sensors (from 22 channels to 64) and layouts (from custom layouts to 10–20). Main results. Our model achieved the highest accuracy with lower standard deviations on the testing datasets. This indicates that the GNN-based transfer learning framework can effectively aggregate knowledge from multiple datasets with different electrode layouts, leading to improved generalization in subject-independent MI EEG classification. Significance. The findings of this study have important implications for brain-computer-interface research, as they highlight a promising method for overcoming the limitations posed by non-unified experimental setups. By enabling the integration of diverse datasets with varying electrode layouts, our proposed approach can help advance the development and application of BMI technologies.

Mesowestern Blot: Simultaneous Analysis of Hundreds of Submicroliter Lysates.

Western blotting is a widely used technique for molecular-weight-resolved analysis of proteins and their posttranslational modifications, but high-throughput implementations of the standard slab gel arrangement are scarce. The previously developed Microwestern requires a piezoelectric pipetting instrument, which is not available for many labs. Here, we report the Mesowestern blot, which uses a 3D-printable gel casting mold to enable high-throughput Western blotting without piezoelectric pipetting and is compatible with the standard sample preparation and small (∼1 μL) sample sizes. The main tradeoffs are reduced molecular weight resolution and higher sample-to-sample CV, making it suitable for qualitative screening applications. The casted polyacrylamide gel contains 336, ∼0.5 μL micropipette-loadable sample wells arranged within a standard microplate footprint. Polyacrylamide % can be altered to change molecular weight resolution profiles. Proof-of-concept experiments using both infrared-fluorescent molecular weight protein ladder and cell lysate (RIPA buffer) demonstrate that the protein loaded in Mesowestern gels is amenable to the standard Western blotting steps. The main difference between Mesowestern and traditional Western is that semidry horizontal instead of immersed vertical gel electrophoresis is used. The linear range of detection is at least 32-fold, and at least ∼500 attomols of β-actin can be detected (∼29 ng of total protein from mammalian cell lysates: ∼100–300 cells). Because the gel mold is 3D-printable, users with access to additive manufacturing cores have significant design freedom for custom layouts. We expect that the technique could be easily adopted by any typical cell and molecular biology laboratory already performing Western blots.

Tapered All-Dielectric EBGs With 3-D Additive Manufacturing for High-Gain Resonant-Cavity Antennas

A resonant-cavity antenna is implemented assembling on an open-ended rectangular waveguide a wideband electromagnetic band gap (EBG), designed as a multilayer. Two different implementations of the multilayer are proposed, labeled as Cases A and B. As to Case A, a high-permittivity layer is embedded between two slabs of low permittivity, whereas a single layer of low permittivity, surrounded by two high-permittivity slabs, is employed in Case B. Successful performances of the broadband behavior are also dependent on the side length of the EBG, that is truncated to small footprints, with an effect of high sidelobe level (SLL). Therefore, grid layouts with nonuniform air holes are proposed for in-plane realization of the dielectric slabs. Their effect in the EBG superstrate is a nonuniform spatial reflectivity, that reduces the SLL keeping a good wideband response. In the EBG manufacturing, both numerically controlled machining techniques and 3-D printing have been employed. 3-D printing has been used for the low permittivity layers, realized in the polylactic acid (PLA) filament, allowing more flexibility in the fabrication of the grid slabs to custom layouts. Results of two antenna prototypes assembling the EBGs, with the parameters of Cases-A and -B and grid layout, to the waveguide source are reported.

FUNCODE: Effective Device-to-System Analysis of Field-Coupled Nanocomputing Circuit Designs

Many beyond-CMOS technologies, based on different switching mechanisms, are arising. Field-coupled technologies are the most promising as they can guarantee an extremely low-power consumption and combine logic and memory into the same device. However, circuit-level explorations, like layout verification and analysis of the circuit performance, considering the constraints of the target technology, cannot be done using existing tools. Here, we propose a methodology to take on this challenge. We present function and connection detection (FUNCODE), an algorithm that can detect element connections, functions, and errors of custom layouts and generate its corresponding very high-speed integrated circuits hardware description language netlist. It is proposed for in-plane and perpendicular nanomagnetic logic as a case study. FUNCODE netlists, which take into account the physical behavior of the technology, were verified using circuits with increasing complexity, from 6 up to 1400 gates with a number of layout elements varying from 200 to 2.3e6.

Studies and Researches on Monitoring by GIS Models Extreme Phenomenons in the Popular Center

Abstract The work involves the realization of a GIS model that includes both information on real estate cadastre and water supply networks. This shows the stages of making such a model, starting from field measurements, to structuring the database and custom layouts. In the study, the distribution pipelines equipped with fire hydrants and the existing building types in the area were considered as the main elements. Buildings were classified according to importance, height, destination, mapping indexes, etc. and have been integrated into the GIS model. GIS programs aim at specifying as much as possible the textual data attached to perform complex analyzes. Autocad and ArcMap programs allow you to get thematic maps on building types, pipeline network analysis on which hydrants are located, and how to protect firewalls. The study model was developed only for a sector in the city of Iaşi, but it can be extended to an application that can be used in other urban areas for the purpose of being used by the water-channel directorate, the intervention teams, the public administration local, etc.

The Use of the GIS Model on the Implementation of Urban Cadastre

Abstract The development of a GIS model that includes both information on real estate cadaster and water supply networks is an efficient one. The paper presents the stages of making such a model, starting from field measurements, to structuring the database and custom layouts. Today’s large volume of data requires information to be centralized into tables that are then attached to graphical entities. In the analysis it was considered that the main components of the real estate cadaster system are the field, the parcel, the owner, and for the water supply network distribution networks, hydrants and manhole. GIS programs aim to specifying properties on custom layouts on structural and functional areas. Autocad and ArcMap software allow you to get themed maps on specific system domains. The study model can be simple to complex and can be generalized for any hydro-urban system (urban localities, rural localities, industrial areas, etc.).

Additive Manufacturing Fused Filament Fabrication Three-Dimensional Printed Pressure Sensor for Prosthetics with Low Elastic Modulus and High Filler Ratio Filament Composites

Abstract Presented here are thermoplastic fused filament fabrication (FFF) three-dimensional (3D) printed piezo-resistive pressure sensors for daily activities utilized on a prosthetic feedback system. The 3D printed pressure sensors were manufactured from various low elastic modulus composites comprising a compressible thermoplastic elastomer and conductive carbon. Carbon is in graphite form and added in high filler ratios. The printed sensors were compared to sensors that were fabricated in a gravity mold to highlight the difference in printed sensors to molded sensors. The design is an improvement on the current prosthetic pressure sensors that are either strain gage or thick/thin film-based sensors. The 3D printed pressure sensor has a thickness and feel similar to human skin, has a simple fabrication technique, and can be manufactured into user-specific geometries. Being FFF 3D printed, the sensor can be easily printed in smaller or larger sizes to create custom layouts or patterns for pressure senso...

Physical design automation of transistor networks

Integrated circuits implemented with traditional standard cell approaches use a limited set of cells available in a library, created in advance, to generate its layout. It breaks complexity but frequently generates circuits with more transistors (due to the reduced numbers of functions and sizes available), more area, higher delays and more power consumption (mainly due to static power consumption, which is proportional to the number of transistors) than its potential. Many approaches have been attempted to improve this scenario at layout level: cell synthesis tools (to speed up the turnaround time of new cells), library-free layout synthesis and full custom layouts. We present in this paper a review of the methodologies and algorithms used in prior works for transistor-level layout synthesis, and especially recent ones targeting technologies beyond 65nm.

L-CBF: A Low-Power, Fast Counting Bloom Filter Architecture

An increasing number of architectural techniques have relied on hardware counting bloom filters (CBFs) to improve upon the energy, delay, and complexity of various processor structures. CBFs improve the energy and speed of membership tests by maintaining an imprecise and compact representation of a large set to be searched. This paper studies the energy, delay, and area characteristics of two implementations for CBFs using full custom layouts in a commercial 0.13-mum fabrication technology. One implementation, S-CBF, uses an SRAM array of counts and a shared up/down counter. Our proposed implementation, L-CBF, utilizes an array of up/down linear feedback shift registers and local zero detectors. Circuit simulations show that for a 1 K-entry CBF with a 15-bit count per entry, L-CBF compared to S-CBF is 3.7times or 1.6times faster and requires 2.3times or 1.4times less energy depending on the operation. Additionally, this paper presents analytical energy and delay models for L-CBF. These models can estimate energy and delay of various CBF organizations during architectural level explorations when a physical level implementation is not available. Our results demonstrate that for a variety of L-CBF organizations, the estimations by analytical models are within 5% and 10% of Spectre simulation results for delay and energy, respectively.

Multimodal visualization interface for data management, self-learning and data presentation

A multimodal visualization software, called the Data Manager (DM), has been developed to increase interdisciplinary communication around the topic of visualization and modeling of various aspects of the human anatomy. Numerous tools used in Radiology are integrated in the interface that runs on standard personal computers. The available tools, combined to hierarchical data management and custom layouts, allow analyzing of medical imaging data using advanced features outside radiological premises (for example, for patient review, conference presentation or tutorial preparation). The system is free, and based on an open-source software development architecture, and therefore updates of the system for custom applications are possible.

A framework for industrial layout generators

The MACLOG family of layout generators creates parameterized custom layouts for many of the cells in the AT&T Cell Library. The authors describe not the MACLOG generators themselves, but the MACLOG framework that is the base of all the generators. The MACLOG generators are built on an object-oriented framework. Though object-oriented design techniques have been described in the literature, the MACLOG framework is one of the first such frameworks used to build an industrial-quality layout generator set. The attempt to build an object-oriented framework structure around the module types results in excessive code duplication and a hard-to-maintain structure. The authors found the service hierarchy-the types of information provided to the user by the generator-often to be a more effective axis for decomposition of functions in the framework. The authors describe the MACLOG framework and detail experiments with framework structure. >

Trends in gate array technology

This paper takes a look at where the IC industry is headed today in the evolution of gate array technology. Projections are made of advancements in gate array technology including both array architecture and design methodology. Historically, the concept of a gate array is at least 15 years old. At that time the basic IC technologies were TTL and ECL bipolar, and P-channel MOS; LSI referred to gate complexities greater than 100. The die sizes were small (100 mils on a side), number of masks few (6–10), and layout geometries were measured in mils. Powerful standard logic families in TTL, ECL, and later CMOS were rapidly expanding. Customised LSis, other than expensive fully hand drawn custom designs, were best obtained using standard cell library approaches. Prior to 1970 there were capable fold and route computer programs which adequately designed custom layouts in a short time with these pre-drawn cells. Though gate arrays existed they were not popular. Standard high power TTL arrays with three layers of interconnect metal and bulk CMOS arrays existed prior to 1970. Maximum gate counts were just over 100 and the number of required masks had increased, due in part because of more than one layer of metal interconnection. Neither the user community nor the IC manufacturers themselves perceived the gate array as particularly useful. The cell library approach was the preferred way to meet lower volume customised requirements, and it was less expensive than full custom. Gate arrays, and to a lesser extent, standard cell designs, were considered wasteful of silicon and useful only for small size and modest performance increase. The military was the primary customer base. The early 1970s saw the IC industry push toward ever greater density and performance. Complexity grew while cost per function came down. The popular standard logic product lines pushed into the MSI level. The earliest microprocessors emerged with their reliance on memories. Gate arrays seemed lost in the shuffle, awaiting improvements in both processing and design methodology.