Socket Connection Research Articles

An Investigation into Healthcare-Data Patterns

Visualising complex data facilitates a more comprehensive stage for conveying knowledge. Within the medical data domain, there is an increasing requirement for valuable and accurate information. Patients need to be confident that their data is being stored safely and securely. As such, it is now becoming necessary to visualise data patterns and trends in real-time to identify erratic and anomalous network access behaviours. In this paper, an investigation into modelling data flow within healthcare infrastructures is presented; where a dataset from a Liverpool-based (UK) hospital is employed for the case study. Specifically, a visualisation of transmission control protocol (TCP) socket connections is put forward, as an investigation into the data complexity and user interaction events within healthcare networks. In addition, a filtering algorithm is proposed for noise reduction in the TCP dataset. Positive results from using this algorithm are apparent on visual inspection, where noise is reduced by up to 89.84%.

Shake Table Studies and Analysis of a Precast Two-Column Bent with Advanced Materials and Pocket Connections

Shake table experiments and analyses of a large-scale precast two-column bent with advanced materials in plastic hinge zones were conducted to develop bridge bents for use in accelerated bridge construction (ABC) in moderate and high seismic zones. Ultrahigh performance concrete (UHPC) and engineered cementitious composite (ECC) were used in column plastic hinge zones to reduce earthquake damage. Precast square columns were connected to a precast footing and a cap beam using pocket (also known as socket) connections. The primary objectives of this investigation were to evaluate the seismic response of the precast bent and the pocket connections and to assess the effectiveness of UHPC and ECC in reducing damage in the plastic hinge zones. The bent was subjected to successive motions simulating scaled versions of the 1994 Northridge-Sylmar earthquake until failure. The experimental results showed that the pocket connections performed well, and the structural integrity was maintained up to a drift ratio of 9.6% and displacement ductility of 12. UHPC and ECC effectively reduced the column plastic hinge damage, although the extent and location of damage for the two materials were different. Another finding of the study was that a relatively simple computational model of the bent in OpenSees led to close correlation between the measured and calculated responses.

Modular data communication methods for a robotic excavator

Abstract This paper introduces a robotic excavator with various hardware and software modules including a task planner (work command generator), work environment sensors, GPS and other sensors to acquire an excavator's status, as well as a robotic controller, electronic valves and other mechanisms. Both wired and wireless connections between these modules are required because of the remotely located control center and sensors. The modules of this robotic excavator also need to form an efficient and error-free data communication network considering the operational characteristics of the automated excavation work. Data communication methods, procedures and protocols of the excavator are addressed. A Data Communication Manager (DCM) is developed using TCP/IP, socket connection, and FTP for macro level communication between the modules, and a data communication protocol for each excavation process is established. Through simulation and field testing, the robustness of the data communication and networking were verified.

Design of AGV 3D Real-Time Simulation Control System Based on Wireless Network

For most of the AGV superior control system is planar two-dimensional, poor visibility and lack of equipment operating efficiency statistics, A three-dimensional AGV simulation control system based on wireless communication and Flexsim logistics simulation software is proposed.. Through the socket socket connection zigbee wireless transmission module serial port and Flexsim software completes the data communication between the processes, thus establishes AGV and Flexsim data communication. Build the 3D system simulation model of AGV and write the control algorithm through Flexsim. At the same time, call the SQL database data to complete the real-time simulation and analyze the running status in real time. Mainly studied the data communication interaction between the AGV wireless communication module and Flexsim, using the AGV of the college laboratory to conduct field tests. The results show that the design program basically achieves the expected functions and effects.

Quasi-static cyclic testing of emulative cast-in-place connections for Accelerated Bridge Construction in seismic regions

This paper presents findings from the first phase of testing at the University of Canterbury on seismic performance of emulative connections for Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) in regions of moderate to high seismicity. Emulative connections between precast concrete elements aim to target similar seismic behaviour as traditional ductile monolithic construction. The emulative solution in this research is called “High Damage Connection” (HDC). HDCs intend to achieve similar levels of seismic performance and ductility in a precast column as that can be expected of a monolithic one. HDC relies on formation of plastic hinges in the precast column during a design level earthquake to emulate monolithic ductile behaviour. Two types of HDCs, the grouted duct connection and member socket connection, were investigated in this research. Four half-scale precast segmental columns were constructed. Two columns featured grouted duct connections as the primary connection type. The other two columns used member socket connections. For a better understanding of the connection response under severe lateral loading, both uniaxial and biaxial testing of the columns was carried out. In this paper, an introduction to each connection type followed by design procedure, detailing considerations and construction methodology are explained in detail. Testing results and observations of seismic performance for each connection are thoroughly presented. The research concludes that High Damage Connections have good potential for ABC in regions of moderate to high seismicity. The connections that were tested achieved good levels of energy dissipation and ductility with similar performance to conventional monolithic connections.

A Robotic Ankle–Foot Prosthesis With Active Alignment

An ankle–foot prosthesis designed to mimic the missing physiological limb generates a large sagittal moment during push off which must be transferred to the residual limb through the socket connection. The large moment is correlated with high internal socket pressures that are often a source of discomfort for the person with amputation, limiting prosthesis use. In this paper, the concept of active alignment is developed. Active alignment realigns the affected residual limb toward the center of pressure (CoP) during stance. During gait, the prosthesis configuration changes to shorten the moment arm between the ground reaction force (GRF) and the residual limb. This reduces the peak moment transferred through the socket interface during late stance. A tethered robotic ankle prosthesis has been developed, and evaluation results are presented for active alignment during normal walking in a laboratory setting. Preliminary testing was performed with a subject without amputation walking with able-bodied adapters at a constant speed. The results show a 33% reduction in the peak resultant moment transferred at the socket limb interface.

Taking Arduino to the Internet of Things: The ASIP programming model

Micro-controllers such as Arduino are widely used by all kinds of makers worldwide. Popularity has been driven by Arduino’s simplicity of use and the large number of sensors and libraries available to extend the basic capabilities of these controllers. The last decade has witnessed a surge of software engineering solutions for “the Internet of Things”, but in several cases these solutions require computational resources that are more advanced than simple, resource-limited micro-controllers.Surprisingly, in spite of being the basic ingredients of complex hardware–software systems, there does not seem to be a simple and flexible way to (1) extend the basic capabilities of micro-controllers, and (2) to coordinate inter-connected micro-controllers in “the Internet of Things”. Indeed, new capabilities are added on a per-application basis and interactions are mainly limited to bespoke, point-to-point protocols that target the hardware I/O rather than the services provided by this hardware.In this paper we present the Arduino Service Interface Programming (ASIP) model, a new model that addresses the issues above by (1) providing a “Service” abstraction to easily add new capabilities to micro-controllers, and (2) providing support for networked boards using a range of strategies, including socket connections, bridging devices, MQTT-based publish–subscribe messaging, discovery services, etc. We provide an open-source implementation of the code running on Arduino boards and client libraries in Java, Python, Racket and Erlang. We show how ASIP enables the rapid development of non-trivial applications (coordination of input/output on distributed boards and implementation of a line-following algorithm for a remote robot) and we assess the performance of ASIP in several ways, both quantitative and qualitative.

Development and Testing of the Mars Rover Mobility Platform for Educational and Research Purposes

Mars exploration has a long history, but there were only four roving vehicles which successfully operated on its surface (e.g. [1]). Main reasons for this are the mission cost and complexity. This paper describes a Mars Rover Mobility Platform for educational and research purposes developed at Kingston University of London. This platform utilises off-the-shelf components to minimise the cost of the project, and is designed to allow for future improvement. The rover is targeted to meet university research and educational objectives. This paper describes the design, manufacturing and control system of a robotic vehicle. The emphasis of this paper is the implementation of the control system. The investigation in locomotive sub-system and its traction performance was done [4]. The rover was manufactured in-house and its manufacturing method and its main components will be described. The control of the vehicle was done using python programming language and implemented on Raspberry Pi 2B+ controller. The communication was done via Wi-Fi using socket connection stream to identify the TCP/IP of the server and connect to the client. Finally, the testing operation was conducted by producing a qualitative comparison between the actual performance and the specified requirements. The rover design reported here achieved climbing capability for the slopes of 23o, the turning radius of zero degrees. The final mass of the rover is 18 kg including allowance for the payload. The rover is able to reach a velocity of 5 cm/s.

Coupled discrete element–finite difference method for analysing the load-deformation behaviour of a single stone column in soft soil

Experimental studies and numerical modelling of the deformation of soft clay stabilised by stone columns have been conducted over the past few decades. Continuum-based numerical models have provided valuable insight into the prediction of settlement, lateral deformation, and stress and strain-rate dependent behaviour of stone columns at a macroscopic scale, but because they consist of granular material such as crushed rock, gravel, and waste rock aggregates, their behaviour is influenced by inter-particle micromechanics and cannot be modelled properly using these models. In this paper a novel coupled model of the discrete element method (DEM) and finite difference method (FDM) is presented to study the deformation of a single stone column installed in soft ground. In this coupled discrete–continuum method, PFC2D and FLAC were used to model the interaction between the stone column and surrounding clay, respectively. The contact forces at the interface between the two zones were determined through a socket connection that allows the DEM to transfer forces and moments to the FDM and vice versa. The predicted results were comparable to the data measured experimentally, showing that the coupled discrete–continuum model proposed in this study could simulate the load-deformation behaviour of a stone column installed in clay. The contact force distribution and shear stress contour developed in the stone column and surrounding clay were captured to provide a better understanding of the load-deformation behaviour of the stone column.

Virtualization Technology for TCP/IP Offload Engine

Network I/O virtualization plays an important role in cloud computing. This paper addresses the system-wide virtualization issues of TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) and presents the architectural designs. We identify three critical factors that affect the performance of a TOE: I/O virtualization architectures, quality of service (QoS), and virtual machine monitor (VMM) scheduler. In our device emulation based TOE, the VMM manages the socket connections in the TOE directly and thus can eliminate packet copy and demultiplexing overheads as appeared in the virtualization of a layer 2 network card. To further reduce hypervisor intervention, the direct I/O access architecture provides the per VM-based physical control interface that helps removing most of the VMM interventions. The direct I/O access architecture out-performs the device emulation architecture as large as 30 percent, or achieves 80 percent of the native 10 Gbit/s TOE system. To continue serving the TOE commands for a VM, no matter the VM is idle or switched out by the VMM, we decouple the TOE I/O command dispatcher from the VMM scheduler. We found that a VMM scheduler with preemptive I/O scheduling and a programmable I/O command dispatcher with deficit weighted round robin (DWRR) policy are able to ensure service fairness and at the same time maximize the TOE utilization.

End-to-End Message Exchange in a Deployable Marine Environment Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Network

We present a pragmatic view of different approaches used to guarantee data delivery in a deployable marine habitat monitoring system, composed of a two-tier dual frequency (2.4 GHz/900 MHz) hierarchical wireless sensor network (WSN). We cover end-to-end application layer aspects. At the lower tier, we preconfigured endpoint (EP) transceivers for automatic data acquisition and wireless transfer using their native Application Program Interface (API) framework. These endpoints communicate with a more powerful intermediate cluster-head (CLH) system. At the upper tier, we deployed a modified low level 8-bit “Lighter” version of the well-known web application protocol called JavaScript Object Notation (JSON, or in our case LJSON) for back and forth CLH to BS validated message exchange. These LJSON messages are converted by the BS to 16-bit JSON and vice versa, for remote Internet interaction. And finally, the BS software establishes Internet Protocol (IP) client socket connections with a remote custom JSON service, in charge of marine habitat sensor data reception, verification, and nonvolatile database storage.

A GCM Solution for Leveraging Server-side JMS Functionality to Android-based Trading Application

The paper presents our solution for a message oriented communication mechanism, employing Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) on the client-side, and Java Message Service (JMS) on the server-side, in order to leverage JMS functionality to Android-based trading application. Our ongoing research has been focused upon conceiving a way to expose the trading services offered by our academic trading system ASETS to a mobile trading application based on Android platform. ASETS trading platform is a distributed SOA implementation, with an original API based on JMS. In order to design and implement an Android based client, able to intercommunicate with the server-side components of ASETS, in a manner consistent with publisher/subscriber JMS communication model, there was particularly necessary to have object imbedded messages, produced by various ASETS services, pushed to the client application. While point-to-point communication model could be resolved on the client-side by employing synchronous HTTP socket connections over TCP/IP, the asynchronously generated messages from the server-side had to reach the client application in a push manner.Keywords: Trading Technologies, JMS, GCM, Android Bridge Servlet, MOM(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)1 IntroductionMessaging and message oriented mid- dlewares (MOM) have revolutionized, over the past decade, the software solutions that can be delivered through service oriented ar- chitectures. Java Message Service (JMS) in- terface, in particular, has proved to offer the most flexible and opened manner for design- ing complex distributed software systems, ranging from social intercommunication ap- plications, to enterprise resource planning, internet banking, trading, and generic data dissemination [1],In tandem with the messaging solutions em- ployed on the enterprise server-side, Android powered mobile devices have become in- creasingly popular, and the diversity and the complexity of applications that the platform supports, open novel perspectives upon the way distributed computing and information technology impact our daily life and busi- nesses.Our research project intends to expand the reach of ASETS trading platform toward the users of mobile devices powered by Android OS.ASETS trading platform features a distribut- ed architecture, service orientated, being im- plemented entirely in Java, and having an original application programming interface (API) designed and built upon JMS [2], [3], Since the JMS libraries jms.jar and imq.jar, required to access the messaging interface that facilitates the communication with the message provider (OpenMQ), are not cur- rently available for the Android platform, we needed to explore a different approach that would provide a seamless communication mechanism between a trading client, residing on a mobile Android device, and the ASETS trading platform.ASETS platform offers a sophisticated API for supporting rich Java applet trading cli- ents, and provides services such as:* Order Management Server (OMS);* Portfolio Management Server (PMS);* Exchange Simulation Engine (ESE), which contains the order matching algo- rithm;* Pseudo Random Order Generator (PROG), to create liquidity within the simulation market;* Delayed Data Feed (DDF), for feeding the trading simulation platform with real world pricing data, captured from Bu- charest Stock Exchange (BSE).Such a JMS based API could not be exposed out of the box to an Android based trading GUI. There have been researches and devel- opments prior Google Cloud Messaging for Android introduction, for interconnecting ap- plications running on mobile devices with JMS based systems [4], [5],In the context of targeting to design and build a trading client application for Android OS, Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) service of- fers a messaging mechanism with the follow- ing main characteristics [6]:* allows third party application servers to send messages to Android-based appli- cations;* offers the ability to deliver messages to an Android application on an Android device, even if the application is not running - as long as the Android based application is set up with the proper broadcast receiver and permissions, the system will wake up the application via Intent broadcast when a message arrives;* the messaging service does not provide any built-in user interface or other han- dling for message data; GCM simply passes raw message data received from the producer straight to the Android ap- plication which, subsequently, has full control of how to handle it. …

Seismic Resistance of Socket Connection between Footing and Precast Column

A new concept has been developed for connecting spread footings and precast columns in bridges. The socket connection is constructed by precasting the column, erecting it, and casting the reinforced concrete footing around it. This system saves construction time on site because, in little more than the time needed to construct the footing, both the column and footing can be constructed. Site erection is facilitated by the fact that the field tolerances are essentially unlimited. The longitudinal column bars are straight and are terminated with mechanical anchors. This arrangement improves constructability, because no bars cross the interface between the column and footing, and it provides better transfer of forces in the connection region than is possible with conventional bent-out longitudinal bars. The surface of the column is roughened to improve adhesion to the surrounding cast-in-place concrete. Axial-load tests demonstrated that the connection can resist column axial loads far above those expected in practice. Cyclic, lateral-load tests demonstrated that the seismic performance of the connection is at least as good as, if not better than, that of a comparable cast-in-place system. The recent deployment of the new system in a highway overpass provided both field experience and initial estimates of the potential time savings.

Hoop Stress and the Conical Connection

Dental implant-abutment connection design has developed into the use of a conical, shank and socket connection between the implant abutment and fixture. The connection between these two elements is, in effect, a conical wedge that may exert lateral forces under load that may result in fracture of the coronal implant socket fixture walls. This study evaluated the axial loading on a conical connection and found that axial loads were well tolerated but off-axial loads were not. Fracture of the implant coronal socket fixture wall occurred under off-axial loading.

A Wireless Health Monitoring System based on Android Operating System

This paper describes a mobile health monitoring system which consists of a portable multifunctional physiological parameters detecting 3AHcare node and a mobile program for real-time data telemetry based on the smartphone with the Android operating system. The 3AHcare node is a health monitoring device with embedding Bluetooth module in it and capable of measuring a subject's ECG, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, respiration, temperature and motion – almost equivalent to the feature set of a hospital bedside patient monitor. In the Android Application, we receive physiological parameters such as ECG via the socket connection between the Android device and the detecting module; we process the received data with special algorithms to get steady waves; we store data locally on microSD flash; we display data by waveform and digit; we alarm by threshold algorithm and we realize remote data transmission via TCP/IP protocol. We have evaluated the performance of the monitoring system in capturing, recording, transmitting and displaying ambulatory data and found the system easy to use and with high precision.

High Performance Experiment Data Archiving with gStore

GSI in Darmstadt (Germany) is a center for heavy ion research. It hosts an Alice Tier2 center and is the home of the future FAIR facility. The planned data rates of the largest FAIR experiments, CBM and Panda, will be similar to those of the current LHC experiments at Cern. gStore is a hierarchical storage system with unique name space and successfully in operation since more than fifteen years. Its core consists of several tape libraries and currently ~20 data mover nodes connected within a SAN network. The gStore clients transfer data via fast socket connections from/to the disk cache of the data movers (~200 TByte currently). Each data mover has also a high speed connection to the GSI lustre file system (~3 PByte data capacity currently). The overall bandwidth between gStore (disk cache or tape) and lustre amounts to 5 GByte/s and will be duplicated in 2012. In the near future the lustre HSM functionality will be implemented with gStore. Each tape drive is accessible from any data mover, fully transparent to the users. The tapes and libraries are managed by commercial software (IBM Tivoli Storage Manager TSM), whereas the disk cache management and the TSM and user interfaces are provided by GSI software. This provides the flexibility needed to tailor gStore according to the always developing requirements of the GSI and FAIR user communities. For Alice users all gStore data are worldwide accessible via Alice grid software. Data streams from running experiments at GSI (up to 500 MByte/s) are written via sockets from the event builders to gStore write cache for migration to tape. In parallel the data are also copied to lustre for online evaluation and monitoring. As all features related to tapes and libraries are handled by TSM gStore is practically completely hardware independent. Additionally, according to the design principles gStore is fully scalable in data capacity and I/O bandwidth. Therefore we are optimistic to fulfill also the dramatically increased mass storage requirements of the FAIR experiments in 2018, which will be some orders of magnitude higher than those of today.

Fatigue Performance of Stiffened Pole-to-Base Plate Socket Connections in High-Mast Structures

AbstractFatigue performance of stiffened pole-to-base plate socket connection in high-mast lighting structures was evaluated by experimental and analytical studies. In absence of sufficient experimental data, constant amplitude fatigue limit (CAFL) of longitudinal stiffener terminations on pole walls is classified as Category E′ in the existing American Association of State Highway and Transpiration Officials (AASHTO) specification. Fatigue performance of this connection in the thin-walled tubular structures is controlled by localized secondary bending stress, the magnitude of which depends on the relative stiffness of the connecting elements. Ten full-size high-mast specimens having stiffened socket connection were tested under constant amplitude reversal loading to determine the fatigue resistance of this connection in finite and infinite life regimes. The specimen design was optimized by parametric finite-element analysis (FEA) and local stress approaches. FEA results were verified by conducting static...

Accelerated bridge construction in Washington State: From research to practice

The Federal Highway Administration is actively promoting Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) as part of the “Every Day Counts” initiative, in an effort to reduce bridge construction time while improving work-zone safety and minimizing environmental impacts. The “Every Day Counts” initiative promotes Highways for LIFE (HfL) projects, allowing states to implement new and innovative technologies for better performance of prefabricated bridge elements in seismic zones. Prefabricated bridge components are in increasing demand for accelerated bridge construction. Precasting eliminates the need for forming, casting, and curing of concrete on site, making bridge construction safer while improving quality and durability. This paper describes the development and implementation of a precast concrete bridge bent system suitable for ABC in high seismic zones, such as western Washington State. At the base of the bent, the column is connected to a spread footing using a socket connection, while at the top the column is joined to the cap beam using bars grouted in ducts. In both cases the connection was verified by testing before the system was implemented on site by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). WSDOT has been aggressively pursuing ABC, and this bridge bent system forms part of that effort.

UML Model Design for Mobile Game on the Android OS

In order to promote the mobile games to keep up with the new technologies development, the mobile game of Gallant Fighter with Double Blade based on the Android OS designed in this paper applies various techniques, especially for the gravity sensing, such as object pool, multi-threaded, socket connection, maps and etc.. The game management, the service class, the sound manager class, the game view class, the pass tips window class, the rank window class, game activity class, skin class collision detection and bit map util class are designed by UML model respectively. Experiments demonstrated its performance and proved that this model is meaningful and useful to develop other online mobile games. The UML model supports the game development and provides happiness for players in the leisure time.

Development of High Level Trigger Software for Belle II at SuperKEKB

The Belle collaboration has been trying for 10 years to reveal the mystery of the current matter-dominated universe. However, much more statistics is required to search for New Physics through quantum loops in decays of B mesons. In order to increase the experimental sensitivity, the next generation B-factory, SuperKEKB, is planned. The design luminosity of SuperKEKB is 8 x 1035cm−2s−1 a factor 40 above KEKB's peak luminosity. At this high luminosity, the level 1 trigger of the Belle II experiment will stream events of 300 kB size at a 30 kHz rate. To reduce the data flow to a manageable level, a high-level trigger (HLT) is needed, which will be implemented using the full offline reconstruction on a large scale PC farm. There, physics level event selection is performed, reducing the event rate by ∼ 10 to a few kHz. To execute the reconstruction the HLT uses the offline event processing framework basf2, which has parallel processing capabilities used for multi-core processing and PC clusters. The event data handling in the HLT is totally object oriented utilizing ROOT I/O with a new method of object passing over the UNIX socket connection. Also under consideration is the use of the HLT output as well to reduce the pixel detector event size by only saving hits associated with a track, resulting in an additional data reduction of ∼ 100 for the pixel detector. In this contribution, the design and implementation of the Belle II HLT are presented together with a report of preliminary testing results.