PC Side Research Articles

Research of the PLC Module Based on the Embedded NC System

PLC module is an important part of embedded NC system, and mainly accomplishes the auxiliary functions of CNC machine tools. This paper completes the work of research and development of the PLC programming software for PC side of the host computer, and the software is developed in VC++6.0 environment based on windows XP system, to realize the editing functions and the mutual conversion between the ladder and instruction language. Focus on the realization of the mutual conversion between ladder with instruction table, use the logical structure of tree when the ladder converts to the instruction table, and use the data structure of stack to complete the conversion. Instruction table is transformed to Ladder by the operation of the stack to complete the conversion.

ZigBee- based Wireless Electronic Scale and its Network Performance Analysis for the Application of Smart Billing System in Super Markets

There is the greatest demand for electronic weighing scale in vegetable shops, health industries and especially to measure the tiny things. This paper proposes a Wireless electronic weighing scale designed using ultra low power MSP430 controller and with ZigBee wireless communication module. The weighing scale measures the weight with the help of strain sensor and the processor, which has an inbuilt FRAM memory and Real time clock and calendar. This makes the scale to update the weighing databases more accurately and instruction with host PC in a wireless manner. The ZigBee cluster tree network is formed to communicate with more than one electronic scale and the network performance is analyzed using NetSim. The Visual Basic language is developed for user interface in PC side for generating bills.

Design of the Video Image Acquisition System Based on ADSP-BF561

This Article design a video image acquisition system implementations which is based on ADI Corporation Blackfin561 DSP , using OV7660 CMOS image sensor for the video input source and advanced JPEG2000 image compression algorithm under the operate system of the uClinux. It achieves a video image acquisition, processing and transmission. Test results show that the PC side you can see clearer images.

Wireless electrocardiography system

Design and realization of a wireless PC-based system for electrocardiography and data acquisition of a patient's heart condition is described in this paper. The system is designed and realized according to virtual instrumentation concept consisting of two subsystems: 1) The battery powered external compact and mobile wireless ECG acquisition hardware on the side of patient and USB connected communication wireless module on the PC side; 2) Standard personal computer with graphical user interface and database support. The USB port is selected to be the communication interface between the ECG acquisition hardware and the PC and also to supply power to the communication wireless module at the PC side. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is designed in the traditional style of ECG paper plots and additional displays based on suggestions of cardiologists. Strict medical requirements are respected in the design of the system. Key words: ECG, virtual instrument, wireless, MCU.

Design of Wireless Electronic Scale Based On MSP430 Microprocessor

To analyze consumer habits and keep good inventory in vegetables, fruits and biscuit shop, detailed transactions information should be saved. An electronic scale is designed based on MSP430 and wireless communication module PTR2000. The scale can not only measure the weight, but also exchange data and instruction with host PC. The condition circuit of strain bridge output signal, time/data circuit, memory circuit, wireless module etc. is presented. The measurement result is processed by the method of moving average filter. User interface in PC side is developed by Visual Basic language.

Usual folic acid intake and folate status in US women aged 12–49 years, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2001–2006

We examined the association of usual folic acid intake with red blood cell folate concentrations (RBC folates) among 6,205 US women aged 12–49 years participating in NHANES 2001–2006. We estimated total usual folic acid intake (best linear unbiased predictors) from foods and supplements accounting for within individual variation in intake using PC SIDE. We used linear regression to estimate geometric mean RBC folates and logistic regression to estimate the percent with low RBC folates (< 150 ng/ml) accounting for the sampling design and adjusting for age, race‐ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, and usual natural food folate intake. Among women with usual folic acid intake (μg/d) of <100, 100–199, 200–299, 300–399, and ≥400; 3%, 4%, 18%, 62%, and 84%, respectively, consumed a supplement with folic acid. Among these intake groups the mean RBC folates (ng/ml) were 220, 230, 247, 275, and 294, respectively. In addition, the percent of women with low RBC folates decreased with higher folic acid intake, but this decrease varied: among non‐Hispanic white women 13.8%, 6.2%, 4.0%, 1.2%, and 0.9%, respectively, had low RBC folates; among Mexican‐American women 7.0%, 6.3%, 6.9%, 2.5%, and 0.2%, respectively; and among non‐Hispanic black women 34.0%, 23.4,% 19.7%, 11.5%, and 8.2%, respectively. Usual folic acid intake is positively associated with RBC folate, but associations with low RBC folate vary by race‐ethnicity.

Book Review: Mac OS X, iPod, and iPhone Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit

Varsalone, J. (Tech. Ed.), Kubasiak, R.R., Morrissey, S., et al. (2009). Mac OS X, iPod, and iPhone Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit. Burlington, MA: Syngress. 551 + xix pages, ISBN: 978-1-59749-297-3, US$59.95. Reviewed by Gary C. Kessler (gary.kessler@champlain.edu) At last! A quality book about computer forensics for Apple products! Alas, I get ahead of myself. Apple's hold on the personal computer marketplace started dwindling on August 12, 1981, the day that the IBM PC was introduced. As an Apple ][+ bigot myself, I refused to touch a PC for some years. But I was also a command line bigot, so when the first Macintosh was introduced in 1983 and hermetically sealed the operating system from users, I did not go out and buy one. In fact, like many of my era, I did eventually end up on the PC side which, ironically, let me do many of the things that my trusty Apple ][+ had in earlier times -- write code, play with the hardware, and, indeed, get to a command line. And, of course, tons of application developers flocked to the PC because of its open architecture. (see PDF for full review)

A Hands-on Laboratory for Introductory Automatic Control Courses

This paper presents a hands-on laboratory for introductory automatic control courses, which will be offered to the third or fourth year students of the department of electronic engineering in the Lunghwa University of Science and Technology. The aim of the hands-on laboratory is to help reinforce the learning process of the students in introductory automatic control courses from a practical point of view. Therefore, a low cost (~D 60) but versatile educational platform based on the dsPIC microcontroller is devised as a learning aid to implement practical control algorithms for motion control systems. A monitor and control software running on the PC side is also developed to collect experimental results from and send commands via universal serial bus (USB) to the platform. All the necessary softwares are given at no cost to the students during the class. In addition to the theoretical part of automatic control systems and microcontroller structures, the hands-on laboratory consists of four parts of exercises which are used to help students learn step by step the automatic control theory, how to implement control algorithms in a microcontroller, and the performance requirements of motion control systems.

Choline in the diets of the US population: NHANES, 2003–2004

Objective: To estimate choline intakes of US subpopulations including children, men, women and pregnant women. Background: Choline is an essential nutrient which plays critical roles in brain development and homocysteine metabolism. Choline is widely distributed in foods; good sources include eggs, meats, cruciferous vegetables and legumes. The DRI for choline is expressed as Adequate Intake (AI). Methods: The USDA data base for choline values and USDA Standard Reference, Release 19 were used to complete choline values in foods listed in USDA Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies 2.0. Choline intakes were estimated for all sources in NHANES survey data for 2003–2004. Distributions of usual intakes of total choline for population groups were estimated using PC SIDE 1.02 (Iowa State University) for the 2-day sample (n= 7581). Results: Mean choline usual intakes exceed the AI for young children. For older children, men, women and pregnant women, mean usual intakes are far below the AI; 10% or less had usual intakes above the AI. Conclusions: Increased consumption of foods that are good sources of choline is needed to improve diets of groups with inadequate choline intakes. (Partial support: the Egg Nutrition Center).

LB films of rodlike phthalocyanine aggregates: specular X-ray reflectivity studies of the effect of interface modification on coherence and microstructure.

We present here X-ray specular reflectivity (XRR) characterization of the ordering of Langmuir-Blodgett films of the liquid crystalline phthalocyanine (Pc) 2,3,9,10,16,17,23,34-octakis(2-benzyloxyethoxy)copper(II) phthalocyanine, 1, on Si(100) wafers with a native oxide layer and these same substrates modified with monolayers of varying percentages of methyl- and phenyl-terminated silanes. The central copper atom in these Pc's provides for high contrast in X-ray reflectivity for single-bilayer films of 1. The XRR data are modeled as arising from multiple layers of organic material, above and below the rows of copper atoms in the aligned Pc cores; variations in the total thickness of these films, and the spacing between the rows of copper atoms, are attributed to changes in the interaction with the substrate, and changes in the Pc orientation and side chain packing. The most pronounced effect on these parameters comes from variations in the ratio of the phenyl-silane versus methyl-silane content of the substrate modifiers and annealing of these films past their crystalline (K) --> liquid crystalline (LC) mesophase transition temperature. Transfer of multiple bilayers of this Pc leads to additional changes in the thickness of each layer, eventually forming a hexagonal close-packed array, reminiscent of bulk fibers of this material, as revealed by X-ray diffraction (XRD).

High performance computing for parallel rendering in surgical autostereoscopic display and navigation

The three-dimensional medical information obtained from Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI), X-ray Computed Tomography (CT), etc. is used for an operation-supporting image, and operations under image guidance have also been conducted. One of the stereoscopic methods is Integral Videography (IV), which is an animated extension of Integral Photography, reproducing a computer-generated graphical object. Though the advantage of IV has been proven in both feasibility studies and clinical applications, one of the issues still unsolved is the notable quantity of calculation that causes significant delay in rendering. Then using parallel processing method integrating Message Passing Interface (MPI) on High Performance Computer (HPC), we shortened the calculating time of IV picture by the shortest at about 0.2 s. Furthermore, by using socket communication, it transmitted to another portable note PC, which is for a display. Then, we achieved the fast presentation of autostereoscopic images seen from an arbitrary direction that was specified with the mouse from the note PC side at anywhere we can access to the network.

An integrated system for nuclear data acquisition

A system is presented for use in Nuclear Physics Data Acquisition. The system is hosted on a Personal Computer's ISA bus, and is based on the TMS320C31 digital signal processor (DSP), a fast floating point DSP that simultaneously handles several different tasks in this system, by means of an interrupt-driven architecture. The system includes three different data acquisition modules: a multi-channel analyzer, a multi-channel scaler, and a signal analyzer. Using the interrupt-driven architecture, the DSP pre-processes the data coming from the three different data acquisition modules, and accepts data requests from the host PC. On the PC side, the system runs under Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT, and it implements the client-server model. While the data acquisition board performs its chores independently, the host PC sends it several commands on behalf of an arbitrary number of clients. Those clients each represent a window over the data being acquired, allowing different users to take different views of the data. Each client can run on the same host computer or on any other computer, provided there is a computer network (the Internet is a possibility, as long as there is enough bandwidth) connecting it to the host. This allows the experimentalist to remotely examine the experimental results from his office without having to go to the lab. On the other hand, different experimentalists can have different views of the data being acquired. All these are benefits stemming from the client-server model.

Blends of bisphenol-A polycarbonate and acrylic polymers: II. PC/acrylic copolymers as a new route for compatibilization

An acrylic polymer containing acid and anhydride units, referred to as reactive polyglutarimide (RPGI), has been used to react with PC. The reaction has been previously determined as an acidolysis of the carbonate bond which breaks the PC chain in two parts. One of those two parts remains free while the other one is grafted on the acrylic backbone. We have found that the anhydride units could also react with the carbonate bonds. In this case the PC macromolecule would also be broken in two parts, which would, however, both be grafted on the acrylic backbone. The reaction has been performed in solution in order to keep good contact between the reacting units. The influence of temperature and concentration on the grafting ratio has been studied. The best experimental conditions were determined in order to obtain a grafted copolymer where the acrylic backbone only supports, on the average, one PC side chain through acid reaction or two PC chains through anhydride reaction. Indeed, these two types of reactions could not be isolated. The efficiency of this copolymer as emulsifier has been studied in solution cast blends as well as in melt mixed blends. The copolymer strongly affects the microstructure in solution cast blends where films containing 30 wt % of PC have become transparent. However, the dispersed phase size of solvent cast blends could be highly influenced by the casting conditions related to solvent trapping. In melt mixed samples, the copolymer also reduces significantly the dispersed phase size, but no transparent blends have been observed so far. These results were compared with those given in the literature describing the efficiency of a synthesized copolymer which has a more complicated structure. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci B: Polym Phys 35: 735–747, 1997

Liquid Crystal Alignment on LB Films of Phthalocyanine Derivatives

Abstract It has been found that contrast ratio of nematic liquid crystal (LC) on phthalocyanine (Pc) derivative Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) film cell has a correlation with dichroic ratio of the LB film. These results show that this homogeneous alignment force is originated from orientation of rod-like aggregates of the Pc derivative. On the other hand, the LC alignment changes from uniform homogeneous alignment to uniform homeotropic alignment through non-uniform tilted alignment, with the increase of the number of side chain carbon atoms of the Pc derivative. Such alignment change has been also observed with the increase of concentration ratio of a long side chain Pc in a mixed Pc LB film. These show that homeotropic alignment force originates from the ordered long side chain. Therefore, LC alignment is determined by Pc orientation and side chain length, and the feasibility of the tilted LC alignment is shown.