Equalizer Design Research Articles

Evidence2Practice (E2P): Leveraging Implementation Science to Promote Careers in HIV Research Among Students From Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The HIV research workforce is not representative of populations most affected by the epidemic. Innovative educational programs are needed to motivate diverse student populations to pursue careers in HIV research. The Duke University Center for AIDS Research Evidence2Practice (E2P) program is a 3-day interactive workshop that introduces students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, implementation science, and human-centered design. Participants develop 1-page action plans to increase awareness and uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis on their campus. The program was evaluated using a partially mixed-method concurrent equal status study design with pre-program and post-program surveys and in-depth interviews. Among the 52 participating students, 44 completed the preworkshop survey, 45 completed the postworkshop survey, and 10 participated in an in-depth interview. Most participants identified as Black or African American and cisgender female. Participating in the E2P program was associated with: (1) an increase in median interest in pursuing a career in HIV research (P < 0.01) and (2) a decrease in median perceived difficulty in starting a career in HIV research (P < 0.01). Several students described that a lack of knowledge about initiating an HIV research career, a perceived lack of qualifications and knowledge about HIV science, and limited experience were major barriers to considering careers in HIV research. The E2P program enhanced HBCU students' interest in careers related to HIV research and improved their self-efficacy to pursue such careers. On-campus educational enrichment initiatives, led by active HIV researchers and clinicians, should be a critical part of diversifying the HIV workforce.

A Review on the Design of Equalizers for Frequency Selective Channels

Wireless channels rarely fulfill the conditions required for distortion-less transmission. sensible wireless channels suffer from the impact of a non-flat magnitude response and a non-linear section response that leads for distortions within the received signals. what is more effects liketiny scale weakening, massive scale weakening and physicist shifts cause dis- similarity between the transmitted and received signals. Wireless channels not showing the perfect impulse response ends up in the reception of multiple copies of the transmitted signal at the receiver thereby leading to entomb image Interference (ISI). A additive and cascading impact of the on top of mentioned reasons ends up inthe degraded performance of electronic communication systems. to avoid these prejudicial effects, many equalizer styles are projected.This paper focuses on the design aspects of equalizers with an inclination towards decision feedback equalizers, due to their efficiency in nullifying the detrimental effects of practical wireless channels. Keywords: Frequency Selective Channel, Equalizer, Decision Feedback Equalizer, Bit Error Rate (BER), Probability of Error (Pe), Throughput.

Secondary School Students’ Attitudes and Teacher-Student Views on Questioning in Mathematics Course

One of the primary objectives of today’s teaching is to prioritize students’ thinking skills as a path to become lifelong learners. Those skills are improved by enabling students to learn actively. Role of teacher in the active learning environment is to facilitate students’ learning, and questions asked by students are important in the process. Based on the relevant considerations, this study aimed to identify questioning attitudes of secondary school students in mathematics courses and investigate their questioning behaviors in line with teacher and student views. The study utilized the partially mixed sequential equal status design. The study group was composed of 15 teachers working at five secondary schools in a city center of a rural province and 690 students. The data were collected through the Attitude Scale Toward Asking Questions, written view forms, semi-structured interviews, and observations. Exploratory statistical techniques were used to analyze quantitative data, and qualitative data were subjected to a content analysis. According to the results from anxiety about questioning subscale of Attitude Scale Toward Asking Questions, the students were anxious above moderate levels although they had high levels of questioning attitudes. Furthermore, it was concluded that number of questions asked by the students increased with higher grade levels, but they asked questions less frequently. In addition, it was determined that about half of the students refrained from asking questions, due to frustration and fear.

Neural network architectures for optical channel nonlinear compensation in digital subcarrier multiplexing systems.

In this work, we propose to use various artificial neural network (ANN) structures for modeling and compensation of intra- and inter-subcarrier fiber nonlinear interference in digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) optical transmission systems. We perform nonlinear channel equalization by employing different ANN cores including convolutional neural networks (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) layers. First, we develop a fiber nonlinearity compensation for DSCM systems based on a fully-connected network across all subcarriers. In subsequent steps, and borrowing from the perturbation analysis of fiber nonlinearity, we gradually upgrade proposed designs towards modular structures with better performance-complexity advantages. Our study shows that putting proper macro structures in design of ANN nonlinear equalizers in DSCM systems can be crucial in development of practical solutions for future generations of coherent optical transceivers.

Equal Strength Optimal Design of Planetary Gear Transmission

In the design of planetary gear transmission, some gears are damaged during early use because of low strength, yet some are big structure sizes with high strength. In the paper, gears’ equal strength and minimum volume of the gearbox is regarded as optimization objective, and the exterior point penalty function method is used to solve them. Last, we obtain the design parameters under the condition of equal strength of the planetary transmission. Compared to the conventional design method, the weak strength of some gears is enhanced, the whole life is increased, and the overall volume is decreased. It shows we can get ideal results by equal strength optimization in the planetary transmission design.

“What's Your Name Again?”: How Race and Gender Dynamics Impact Codesign Processes and Output

Creating technology products using codesign techniques often results in higher end-user engagement compared to expert-driven designs. Codesign sessions are typically structured in flexible and informal ways to achieve equal design partnerships especially in adult-child interactions. This generally leads to better design output, however, it may also increase the enactment of socially constructed stereotypes and biases in ways that negatively affect the experiences of racial minorities and girls/women in design spaces. We codesigned a video game with a K-5 afterschool program located in a working-class, rural, predominantly white county over 20 weeks. We uncover ways that the codesign process and different activity types can create a permissive environment for enacting behaviors that are harmful to minorities. We discuss ways to manage and restructure codesign programs to be more conducive for children and adults from diverse backgrounds, ultimately leading to healthier design partnerships.

Indoor Air Quality and Thermal Environment Assessment of Scottish Homes with Different Building Fabrics

The ongoing climate change and policies around it are changing how we design and build homes to meet national carbon emission targets. Some countries such as Scotland are adopting higher-energy-efficient buildings as minimum requirements in the building regulations. While net zero homes might be more energy-efficient and emit fewer operational carbon emissions, we have yet to fully understand the influence on the indoor environment, particularly on indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort. This study compares the IAQ of three homes in Scotland with equal internal layouts and designs but different building fabrics. The homes represent the minimum Scottish building regulations (2015), the Passivhaus standard and the Scottish ‘Gold Standard’. Temperature, relative humidity, PM2.5 and total volatile organic compounds (tVOC) were measured at five-minute intervals for seven months and compared to occupants’ subjective responses to the IAQ. All three homes had temperatures above the recommended thresholds for overheating. Measured hygrothermal conditions were within the ideal range 66.4% of the time in the Passivhaus, 56.4% in the Gold Standard home and 62.7% in the control home. Measured IAQ was better in homes with higher energy efficiency, particularly tVOC. For instance, indoor PM2.5 in the Passivhaus were 78.0% of the time below the threshold, while in the standard home the figure was 51.5%, with a weak correlation with outdoor PM2.5 (Passivhaus: B rs = 0.167, K rs = 0.306 and L rs = 0.163 (p &lt; 0.001); Gold: B rs = −0.157, K rs = 0.322 and L rs = 0.340 (p &lt; 0.001); Control: B rs = −0.111, K rs = 0.235 and L rs = 0.235 (p &lt; 0.001)). TVOCs in the Passivhaus were 81.3%, while in the control home they were 55.0%. While the results cannot be generalised, due to the small sample, this study has significant policy implications, particularly in Scotland, exhibiting the importance of IAQ in current building legislation and sustainable assessment methods.

Snapshot hyperspectral imaging based on equalization designed DOE.

Hyperspectral imaging attempts to determine distinctive information in spatial and spectral domain of a target. Over the past few years, hyperspectral imaging systems have developed towards lighter and faster. In phase-coded hyperspectral imaging systems, a better coding aperture design can improve the spectral accuracy relatively. Using wave optics, we post an equalization designed phase-coded aperture to achieve desired equalization point spread functions (PSFs) which provides richer features for subsequent image reconstruction. During the reconstruction of images, our raised hyperspectral reconstruction network, CAFormer, achieves better results than the state-of-the-art networks with less computation by substituting self-attention with channel-attention. Our work revolves around the equalization design of the phase-coded aperture and optimizes the imaging process from three aspects: hardware design, reconstruction algorithm, and PSF calibration. Our work is putting snapshot compact hyperspectral technology closer to a practical application.

Organizational Characteristics of Senior Centers and Engagement in Dementia-Friendly Communities.

Dementia-friendly communities (DFCs) are systematic and collaborative efforts to make local communities more supportive and inclusive of persons living with dementia and their care partners. This study explores how the organizational characteristics of senior centers influence their engagement in DFCs. We used a partially mixed, concurrent, equal status design, drawing on qualitative interviews with staff from 13 senior centers leading DFC initiatives as part of a statewide dementia-friendly network in Massachusetts, as well as quantitative data from 342 senior centers collected as part of a statewide survey. The qualitative results demonstrated ways in which human, social, tangible, and programmatic capital facilitate senior centers' DFC engagement. In particular, the results illuminated the importance of social capital with organizations and groups outside of the senior center, spanning the municipal, regional, and state levels. Findings from multivariate analyses further indicated robust and strong associations between higher levels of social capital, as well as more dementia-focused programming and greater variety of funding sources, with greater likelihood of engagement in DFC work. Results indicate the importance of policy and practice to foster both organizational capacity and multilevel systems conditions to enable and motivate senior centers' involvement in DFC initiatives.

Low-Resolution MMSE Equalization for Massive MU-MIMO Systems

Finite-alphabet equalization that represents a spatial equalization matrix with low-resolution coefficients is a promising technique to reduce the power consumption, processing delay, and circuit area of baseband processing in the context of all-digital massive multiuser multiple-input multiple-output uplink systems. However, to minimize the performance loss caused by a coarse-resolution spatial equalization matrix, its coefficients must be carefully designed in the minimum mean-square error sense to achieve the desired bit error rate (BER) performance, which unfortunately constitutes an NP-hard optimization problem. To tackle this problem, we first reformulate the finite-alphabet equalization design problem as an unconstrained optimization on a smooth Riemannian manifold. Then we propose an algorithm based on Riemannian manifold optimization (RMO) to solve the reformulated problem. Based on simulation results, the proposed 2-bit RMO-assisted equalizer outperforms its state-of-the-art counterparts while maintaining the same asymptotic complexity. In addition, the proposed 2-bit RMOassisted equalizer exhibits a loss of only 1.47 dB at a BER of 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-4</sup> compared to an unquantized linear minimum mean squared error equalizer.

Engagement of Persons with Dementia in Public Consultations: Process Evaluation

Engagement of persons living with dementia in public consultations is central to the development of dementia-friendly communities (DFC). However, due to a lack of resources and expertise in how to support their involvement, persons living with dementia are not always involved in processes for planning the development and implementation of DFC initiatives. To better understand processes and methods that facilitate the engagement of persons living with dementia in public consultations, we evaluated the public consultation processes of a Canadian DFC initiative. A partially mixed-methods sequential equal status design guided this process evaluation. Data sources included surveys completed by public consultation participants, focus groups with members of the group that led the public consultation process, and the report that outlines consultation findings. Study results highlight the strengths and limitations of the public consultations and include recommendations for engaging persons living with dementia in public consultations. Results emphasize the importance of including persons living with dementia in DFC initiatives as project partners and public consultation participants.

Pre-service Teachers’ Perceptions and Their Professional Preparation Levels for Multicultural Education: Implications for Teacher Education Curricula

Purpose: This study examines pre-service teachers’ perceptions and their professional preparation levels for multicultural education.&#x0D; Design/Methodology/Approach: In accordance with the research problems, this study was conducted using a mixed method research and a partial mixed sequential and equal status design. In the quantitative part, 381 pre-service teachers were surveyed using the Multicultural Perception Scale (MPC) to assess their perspectives on multicultural education. In the qualitative part, 20 pre-service teachers were interviewed individually to determine their levels of professional preparation for multicultural education.&#x0D; Findings: The quantitative findings of the study showed that pre-service teachers have a moderate level of perception their professional preparation levels for multicultural education. Pre-service teachers enrolled in the Primary Education program have a higher perception of multicultural education than pre-service teachers enrolled in other teacher education programs. Furthermore, there is no significant difference between grades. On the other hand, it appears that male pre-service teachers have significantly lower perceptions of multicultural education than female pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers are observed to emphasize the terms "diversity, interaction, and togetherness" when defining multicultural education, according to the qualitative findings of this study. In addition, they emphasized the interactions between pre-service teachers and international students, the program's course content, and extracurricular activities in light of the findings regarding the teacher education program's contribution to and opportunities for enhancing the levels of professional preparation for multicultural education. Examining the recommendations of pre-service teachers for teacher education, it is evident that more opportunities for extracurricular activities, school experience, and observation are recommended. Another recommendation highlighted is the addition of a multicultural education course to the teacher education program.&#x0D; Highlights: According to the findings, multicultural education must be more thoroughly integrated into teacher education programs. It is anticipated that the study's findings will contribute to future studies of curriculum development and research on multicultural education conducted by those involved in teacher education at the national and international levels.

Design, Analysis and Optimization of a Lightweight Vehicle's Leaf Springs

In recent years, the automobile industry has primarily concentrated on reducing weight and improving ride quality. Because composite materials have a high strength-to-weight ratio, strong corrosion-resistance, and tailorable qualities, Steel leaf springs are being phased out in favour of composite leaf springs in the automotive industry. Three strategies have been investigated to reduce vehicle weight: rationalizing the body structure, using lightweight materials for parts, and reducing vehicle size. This study describes the static and dynamic analysis of steel 55Si2Mn90 parabolic leaf springs as well as composite parabolic leaf springs consisting of E Glass fibre, Carbon fibre, and Kevlar fibre. The goal of this study is to examine the load-carrying capability, stiffness, and weight reduction of composite and steel leaf springs. Dimensions of an existing steel 55Si2Mn90 parabolic leaf spring and a light commercial vehicle's composite parabolic leaf spring are taken. In terms of weight and stress developed, a comparison was made between composite and steel leaf springs. The Kevlar fiber leaf spring, after optimization, is 45.67% lower in weight than other materials and has superior riding quality than a typical steel spring with equal design criteria.

Early Childhood Professionals’ Reported Use of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices During Initial Evaluations: A Mixed Methods Study

We utilized a mixed methods design to analyze responses to a U.S.-distributed survey regarding early childhood professionals’ ( N = 1,047) use of culturally and linguistically responsive practices during the initial evaluation for early intervention or early childhood special education. Findings from the fully mixed concurrent equal status mixed methods design showed that personnel used some culturally and linguistically responsive evaluation practices, such as using interpreters and asking families about language use and routines at home. Other culturally and linguistically responsive evaluation practices were used by fewer than half of survey respondents. Participants noted a lack of bicultural and bilingual staff, training, materials, and other supports for implementing culturally and linguistically responsive evaluations. We discuss the need for ongoing efforts to ensure equitable access to early intervention and special education services for racially and linguistically marginalized young children.

Design and development of a cable-driven elephant trunk robot with variable cross-sections

PurposeIn large equipment and highly complex confined workspaces, the maintenance is usually carried out by snake-arm robots with equal cross-sections. However, the equal cross-sectional design results in the snake arm suffering from stress concentration and restricted working space. The purpose of this paper is to design a variable cross-section elephant trunk robot (ETR) that can address these shortcomings through bionic principles.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes a cable-driven ETR to explore the advantages and inspiration of variable cross-section features for hyper-redundant robot design. For the kinematic characteristics, the influence of the variable cross-section design on the maximum joint angle of the ETR is analysed using the control variables method and the structural parameters are selected. Based on the biological inspiration of the whole elephant trunk following the movement of the trunk tip, a trajectory-tracking algorithm is designed to solve the inverse kinematics of the ETR.FindingsSimulation and test results show the unique advantages of the proposed variable cross-section ETR in kinematics and forces, which can reduce stress concentrations and increase the flexibility of movement.Originality/valueThis paper presents a design method for a variable cross-section ETR for confined working spaces, analyses the kinematic characteristics and develops a targeted trajectory control algorithm.

DCSAU-Net: A deeper and more compact split-attention U-Net for medical image segmentation

Deep learning architecture with convolutional neural network achieves outstanding success in the field of computer vision. Where U-Net has made a great breakthrough in biomedical image segmentation and has been widely applied in a wide range of practical scenarios. However, the equal design of every downsampling layer in the encoder part and simply stacked convolutions do not allow U-Net to extract sufficient information of features from different depths. The increasing complexity of medical images brings new challenges to the existing methods. In this paper, we propose a deeper and more compact split-attention u-shape network, which efficiently utilises low-level and high-level semantic information based on two frameworks: primary feature conservation and compact split-attention block. We evaluate the proposed model on CVC-ClinicDB, 2018 Data Science Bowl, ISIC-2018, SegPC-2021 and BraTS-2021 datasets. As a result, our proposed model displays better performance than other state-of-the-art methods in terms of the mean intersection over union and dice coefficient. More significantly, the proposed model demonstrates excellent segmentation performance on challenging images. The code for our work and more technical details can be found at https://github.com/xq141839/DCSAU-Net.

Modelleme Uygulamalarının Matematik Okuryazarlığı Üzerindeki Rolünün İncelenmesi

The mathematical literacy or competence notion in PISA deals with the capacity of students to analyze, reason and communicate efficiently as they pose, formulate, solve and interpret mathematical problems in a variety of situations. The best way to improve mathematics literacy is that students have the necessary mathematical knowledge and different problem solving strategies, know when and how to use these strategies, and work with activities that involve different contexts of interest. When considered in this respect, teachers have an important role in the development of students' mathematical literacy. The aim of this study was to investigate the mathematics literacy status of Mathematics Teacher Candidates through PISA questions. The mathematical literacy status of pre-service teachers was examined within the scope of conceptual, operational and contextual questions and in terms of gender, academic grade point average and mathematical modeling. At the same time, semi-structured interviews have examined the difficulties that pre-service teachers experienced. Fully mixed concurrent equal status design was used. The participants were 113 pre-service mathematics teachers. Independent samples t-test and covariance analysis was used for the comparisons. Qualitative data analysis was conducted with content analysis. The research results, together with the suggestions, reveal important points for future studies.

Pre-Layout Parasitic-Aware Design Optimizing for RF Circuits Using Graph Neural Network

The performance of analog and RF circuits is widely affected by the interconnection parasitic in the circuit. With the progress of technology, interconnection parasitics plays a larger role in performance deterioration. To solve this problem, designers must repeat layout design and validation process. In order to achieve an upgrade in the design efficiency, in this paper, a Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based pre-layout parasitic parameter prediction method is proposed and applied to the design optimization of a 28 nm PLL. With the new method adopted, the frequency band overlap rate of the VCO is improved by 2.3 percents for an equal design effort. Similarly, the optimized CP is superior to the traditional method with a 15 ps mismatch time. These improvements are achieved under the premise of greatly saving the optimization iteration and verification costs.

Growth and Yield Responses of Various Nutrient Efficient Maize Lines to Application of Low Doses of Biological Fertilizers and Chemical Fertilizers in Different Growing Seasons

Through the use of low dosages of chemical fertilizers and effective nutrient-corn genotypes that respond to bio-fertilizer type assignments, this study intends to produce rather steady outcomes over the course of several growing seasons. Field tests for this study have been conducted at the ATP Ministry of Research and Technology in South Sumatra. The experiment was run across two growing seasons: the dry season (May through September 2011) and the rainy season (January–April 2012). The equal split-split plot design is used for the study's two growing seasons. The central conflict concerns the application of chemical fertilizer at the following rates: P1: 50% standard dose of ATP (200 kg urea, 50 kg SP36, and 25 kg KCl ha-1), and P2: 25% standard dose of ATP (100 kg urea, 25 kg SP36, and 12,5 kg KCl ha-1). Treatment of several biological fertilizer subplots: H0: no biological fertilizer (control); H1: mycorrhiza; H2: bacterial phosphate solvent. The treatment of children plot uses a variety of corn strains with effective nutrient selection outcomes, including strains B41 (G1), L164 (G2), S219 (G3), and variations BISI 816, as the genotype comparison (G4). Three times each was used for each combination of treatments. The results of the two investigations indicate that strain B41 can produce adaptive growth based on the growing season, is more resilient to drought stress, and may be able to produce more at lower doses of chemical fertilizer while being comparatively stable. A combination of chemical fertilizer at the 50% standard dose of ATP and mycorrhizal fertilizer, along with strain B41, has the best impact on the growth and yield of maize on marginal dryland. Mycorrhizae fertilizer at various levels of low doses of chemical fertilizer can increase the growth and yield of maize in two different cropping seasons. All of the examined maize lines generally showed the ability of the bacteria connected to mycorrhizal and phosphate solvents to enhance nutrient absorption

Comparative Analysis of Equal and Unequal Grounding Grid Configurations by Compression Ratio and Least Square Curve Fitting Techniques

The primary aim of the power system grounding is to safeguard the person and satisfying the performance of the power system to maintain reliable operation. With equal conductor spacing grounding grid design, the distribution of the current in the grid is not uniform. Hence, unequal grid conductor span in which grid conductors are concentrated more at the periphery is safer to practice than equal spacing. This paper presents the comparative analysis of two novel techniques that create unequal spacing among the grid conductors: the least-square curve fitting technique and the compression ratio technique with equal grid configuration for both square and rectangular grids. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is adopted for finding out one optimal feasible solution among many feasible solutions of equal grid configuration for both square and rectangular grids. Comparative analysis is also carried out between square and rectangular grids using the least square curve fitting technique as it results in only one unequal grid configuration. Simulation results are obtained by the MATLAB software developed. Percentage of improvement in ground potential rise, step voltage, touch voltage, and grid resistance with variation in compression ratios are plotted.