Raios γ são bilhões de vezes mais energéticos do que fótons visíveis. Através da observação do céu deste tipo de radiação, é possível estudar fenômenos como a emissão de pulsares, explosões de super-novas e buracos negros, assim como os gamma ray bursts, um dos maiores mistérios da astrofísica moderna. A principal técnica utilizada em observações astrofísicas de chuveiros de raios gama é a de Telescópios Cherenkov, que podem reconstruir a trajetória dos raios γ durante sua passagem pela atmosfera observando sua emissão de radiação Cherenkov. Existem diversos experimentos bem-sucedidos em funcionamento, tais como o VERITAS, MAGIC e HESS. Em 2006 um novo observatório foi proposto, com sensibilidade uma ordem de magnitude melhor do que qualquer outro experimento atual. O Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) está em fase de protótipo e consistirá de dezenas de telescópios Cherenkov com tamanhos diferentes, o que possibilitará observações em muitas regiões do espectro de raios-gama. O local onde o Observatório será construído ainda não foi decidido e dependerá de várias características geográficas para fazê-lo, sendo uma das mais importantes o tempo observável, que deve ser maior que 80% para ser considerado um possível sítio. Um dos locais propostos está localizado no norte da Argentina, próximo a cidade de San Antonio de los Cobres (SAC). Para demonstrar a funcionalidade deste sítio, desenvolvemos um espaço nele para testarmos propriedades ópticas e mecânicas de quatro protótipos de espelhos, além de suas condições de condensação. Três espelhos hexagonais de Vidro/Alumínio, com 1.5 metro de base a base, e um circular de Vidro/Dielétrico, com 0.5 metro de diâmetro, todos esféricos com posição focal entre 15 e 16 metros, foram expostos às condições ambientais de SAC entre Maio/2013 até Junho/2014. Para testar a variação de suas propriedades mecânicas e ópticas devido à exposição ao meio ambiente, dois testes foram feitos. Para verificar se a curvatura e a suavidade da superfície do espelho permaneceram constantes, desenvolvemos um equipamento no Instituto de Física de São Carlos que media a posição 2f do espelho, onde a imagem formada é a menor possível, e sua Função Ponto Espalhada (PSF), o tamanho da imagem feita pelo espelho de uma fonte pontual. A posição focal de todos os espelhos foi estável, enquanto a PSF mostrou pequena variação com o tempo de exposição. Para analisar a variação da cobertura de Alumínio (ou Dielétrico) dos espelhos, nós medimos a variação de sua refletividade através de um espectrômetro portátil fabricado pela OceanOptics, que mostrou que a cobertura dielétrica é mais estável do que as de alumínio, que tiveram pouca variação entre 300-400 nm na maioria dos espelhos. E, finalmente, para testar a qualidade de ambos espelho e sítio em relação ao tempo de observação, calculamos o tempo de condensação de dois espelhos durante o período de Dezembro/2013 até Abril/2014. Isso foi feito através de fotos automáticas de cada espelho tiradas remotamente durante a noite, fornecendo dados para observar mudanças diárias na qualidade da superfície dos espelhos assim como a condensação durante esse período. Um espelho de Vidro/Alumínio e um de Vidro/Dielétrico foram testados, ambos mostrando resultados similares de aproximadamente 20% de tempo condensado, estando no limite de 80% de tempo observacional mencionado anteriormente. Através destes testes, pretendemos criar uma técnica para o cálculo do tempo de condensação em qualquer sítio proposto. / γrays are billions of times more energetic than visible photons. Through the sky observation of this kind of radiation, it is possible to study phenomena like the emission from pulsars, supernova explosions and black holes, as well as gamma-ray bursts, one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. The main technique used in astrophysical observations in γrays showers is the Imaging Cherenkov Telescope, which can image the trajectory of gamma-rays during its passage through the atmosphere by observing its emission of Cherenkov radiation. There are several successful experiments currently functioning, such as VERITAS, MAGIC and HESS. In 2006, a new observatory was proposed, which will have a sensitivity one order of magnitude better than any of the existing experiments. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is in its prototype phase, and will consist of several tens of Cherenkov telescopes with different sizes, which will allow observation in many different regions of the γray spectrum. The site where the Observatory will be constructed is not yet decided and it depends on several geographic characteristics, being one of the most important the observable time, which must be above 80% to be considered as a possible site. One of the proposed sites is located in the north of Argentina, close to the city of San Antonio de los Cobres (SAC). In order to demonstrate the functionality of the site, we developed a facility on it to test the optical and mechanical properties of four prototype mirrors, as well as their condensation conditions. Three Glass/Aluminum hexagonal mirrors, 1.5 meters flat-to-flat diameter, and one Glass/Dielectric circular mirror, 0.5 meters diameter, all spherical with a focal position between 15 and 16 meters, were exposed to the environmental conditions of SAC from May/2013 until June/2014. To test their mechanical and optical properties variation because of the environment exposition, two different tests were made. In order to verify if the curvature and smoothness of the mirrors remained constant, we developed an equipment at the Instituto the Física de São Carlos that could measure the 2f position, where the image formed by the mirror is the smallest as possible, and its Point Spread Function (PSF), the size of the image made by the mirror by a punctual source. The focal position of all mirrors was proven to be stable, while the PSF size showed small differences according to the exposure time. To examine the variation of the Aluminum (or Dielectric) covering of the mirrors we measured its reflectivity variation through a portable spectrometer fabricated by OceanOptics, which showed that the dielectric covering is more stable than the Aluminum ones, even though all of them showed a constant reflectivity in the 300-400 nm range. And finally, to test both the mirror and the site quality in observation time, we calculated the condensed time of two mirrors during the period of December/2013 until April/2014. This was done through automatic pictures of each mirror taken remotely during the night, providing data to observe daily changes in the quality of the mirror surfaces as well as if there is condensation during that period. A Glass/Aluminum mirror and the Glass/Dielectric one were tested, both showing very similar results of around 20% condensed time, being in the limit of the 80% of observational time forementioned. Through these tests, we intend to provide a technique for the calculation of condensed time in any proposed site.

Esta dissertação apresenta novos resultados para a solução de problemas de implementação computacional na estimativa de sistemas singulares e sistemas Markovianos. São apresentados algoritmos alternativos para problemas de filtragem de maneira a minimizar problemas causados principalmente por erros de arredondamento e mal condicionamento de matrizes. O trabalho envolve basicamente algoritmos array e filtragem de informação para a estimativa de sistemas singulares nominais e robustos. Também é deduzido um algoritmo array para a filtragem de sistemas lineares sujeitos a saltos Markovianos. / This dissertation presents new results to solve computational implementation problems to estimate singular and Markovian systems. Alternative algorithms to handle computational filtering errors due rounding errors and ill-conditioned matrices are developed. This dissertation comprehends basically array algorithms and information filters for the estimate of nominal and robust singular systems. Also, it is developed an array algorithm for Markovian jump linear systems filtering.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-04-05T14:47:50Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_Figueiroa(versao_final).pdf: 2779464 bytes, checksum: bec03362367d058faa9ed8c36d09b5f8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-05T14:47:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação_Figueiroa(versao_final).pdf: 2779464 bytes, checksum: bec03362367d058faa9ed8c36d09b5f8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-17 / A partir da revelação da estrutura em dupla-hélice do DNA, em 1953, foi aberto o caminho para a compreensão dos mecanismos que codificam as instruções de construção e desenvolvimento das células dos seres vivos. A nova geração de sequenciadores (NGS) têm produzido gigantescos volumes de dados nos Bancos de Dados biológicos cujas informações podem demandar uma intensa atividade computacional em sua compilação. Entretanto, o desempenho das ferramentas empregadas na Biologia Computacional não tem evoluído na mesma taxa de crescimento desses bancos, podendo impor restrições aos avanços neste campo de pesquisa. Uma das principais técnicas usadas é o alinhamento de sequências que, a partir da identificação de similaridades, possibilitam a análise de regiões conservadas em sequências homólogas, servem como ponto de partida no estudo de estruturas secundárias de proteínas e de construção de àrvores filogenéticas, entre outros. Como os algoritmos exatos de alinhamento possuem complexidade quadrática no tempo e no espaço, o custo computacional poderá ser elevado demandando estratégias de aceleração. Neste contexto, a Computação de Alto Desempenho (HPC), estruturada em Supercomputadores e Clusters, tem sido, empregada. No entanto, o investimento inicial e os requisitos de manutenção, espaço físico, refrigeração, além do consumo de energia, podem representar custos significativos. As arquiteturas paralelas híbridas baseadas na ação conjunta de PCs e dispositivos aceleradores como chips VLSI, GPGPUs e FPGAs, surgiram como alternativas mais acessíveis, apresentando resultados promissores. O projeto descrito nesta dissertação tem por objetivo a aceleração do algoritmo de alinhamento-ótimo global, conhecido como Needleman-Wunsch, a partir de uma plataforma híbrida baseada em um PC (host) e um FPGA. A aceleração ocorre a partir da exploração das possibilidades de paralelismo oferecidas pelo algoritmo e sua implementação em hardware. A arquitetura desenvolvida é baseada num Array Sistólico Linear apresentando elevado desempenho e boa escalabilidade. / From the revelation of the structure in double-helix of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) by James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick, in 1953, it opened the way for the understanding of the mechanismis that encoding the building instructions and development of cells of living beings. The DNA sequencing is one of the first steps in this process. The new generation of sequencers (NGS) have produced massive amounts of data on biological databases whose information may require intense computational activity in your compilation. However, the performance of the tools employed in Computational Biology has not evolved at the same rate of growth of these banks, may impose restrictions on advances in this research field. One of the primary techniques used is the sequence alignment that from the identification of similarities, enable the analysis of conserved regions of homologous sequences, serve as the starting point in the study of protein secondary structures and the construction of phylogenetic trees, among others. As the exact alignment algorithms have quadratic complexity in time and space, the computational cost can be high demanding acceleration strategies. In this context, the High Performance Computing (HPC), structured in supercomputers and clusters, has been employed. However, the initial investment and maintenance requirements, floor space, cooling, in addition to energy consumption, may represent significant costs. The hybrid parallel architectures based on joint action of PCs and devices accelerators as VLSI chips, GPGPUs and FPGAs, have emerged as more affordable alternatives, with promising results. The project described in this dissertation aims at accelerating the global optimal-alignment algorithm, known as Needleman-Wunsch, from a hybrid platform based on a PC, that acts as host, and an FPGA. The acceleration occurs through exploration of the parallelism opportunities offered by the algorithm and implemented in hardware. In this, an architecture based on a Linear Systolic Array offers high performance and high scalability.

A translocação recíproca é o rearranjo equilibrado mais comum em humanos. Frequentemente, indivíduos com rearranjos equilibrados não apresentam manifestações clínicas, entretanto, na meiose, o pareamento entre cromossomos translocados forma uma figura quadrivalente em forma de cruz que torna a disjunção cromossômica incerta e dependendo do rearranjo, o individuo pode vir a ser infértil, apresentar um risco aumentado de abortamento espontâneo e/ou da prole apresentar alterações fenotípicas. Neste projeto, investigamos duas famílias de pacientes inférteis, portadores de translocações cromossômicas. O objetivo foi caracterizar as alterações citogenéticas e citogenômicas relacionadas à infertilidade masculina em pacientes portadores de rearranjos aparentemente equilibrados, associando técnicas de citogenética clássica (bandeamento GTG), citogenética molecular (FISH) e citogenômica (array-CGH). Foram estudados sete indivíduos da família 1, sendo diagnosticados três portadores da translocação (X;22), sendo um deles azoospérmico. Nesta família foram ainda detectados dois casos de mosaicismo para síndrome de Turner. A família 2 foi composta por dois irmãos oligozoospérmicos, portadores de translocação (8;13). Com a aplicação da técnica de FISH, definimos o cariótipo final dos portadores dos rearranjos como 46,XX ou 46,XY,t(X;22)(p22.3;q11.2) para a família 1 e 46,XY,t(8;13)(q13;q14)para a família 2. A técnica de array-CGH (plataforma 2x400K, Agilent) detectou alterações no número de cópias de alguns genes candidatos relacionados ao fenótipo de infertilidade, sendo a sequência 132 de piRNAs, os genes DDX11, Jagged 2 e ADAM18 na família 1 e os genes candidatos ADAM18 e POTE nos pacientes da família 2. / Reciprocal translocations are the most common balanced rearrangement in humans. Often individuals with balanced rearrangements show no clinical findings. However, in meiosis, the pairing between translocated chromosomes forms a quadrivalent cross-shaped figure which has the effect of making chromosome disjunction uncertain and, depending on the rearrangement, and on the segregation of the unbalanced chromosomes, the individual can be infertile, can present with an increased risk of spontaneous abortions or can have an offspring with abnormal phenotype. We have studied two families of infertile patients, who were carriers of chromosomal translocations. The objective was to characterize the cytogenetic and cytogenomic alterations related to male infertility in patients with apparently balanced rearrangements using classical cytogenetic techniques (GTG banding), molecular cytogenetics (FISH) and cytogenomics (array-CGH). Seven subjects of the family 1 were studied, including three carriers of translocation (X;22), one azoospermic. Two cases of mosaicism for Turner syndrome were detected in this family. The second family consisted of two oligozoospermic brothers with translocation (8;13). FISH was used to characterize the karyotypes as 46, XX or 46,XY, t(X;22)(p22.3;q11.2) for the members of the family 1 and 46,XY,t(8;13)(q13;q14) for family 2. Array-CGH was also performed using the Agilent platform 2x400K, to detect associated copy number variations of some of the candidate genes that could be related to infertility. In the family 1 the candidate genes were 132 piRNAs sequences and DDX11,Jagged 2 and ADAM18 genes. The candidate genes for the family 2 were ADAM18 and POT.

This thesis addresses radiation pattern synthesis problems for small linear periodic phased arrays (with array elements less then 10). Due to the small array size conventional pattern synthesis techniques fail to produce the required results. In the case of practical small arrays, mutual coupling and element pattern asymmetric effect degrade the array radiation performance. The main performance metrics considered in this thesis include side lobe level (SLL), gain, halfpower beamwidth (HPBW) and mainbeam scan direction. The conventional pattern synthesis approaches result in sub optimal gain, SLL and HPBW due to the limited number of elements and the mutual coupling involved. In case of difference pattern synthesis these factors resulted in lower difference pattern slope, degraded SLL and difference peak asymmetry. The sum and difference patterns are used in monopulse arrays and a simplified feed that could produce both patterns with acceptable radiation properties is of interest and has been examined (chapter 5). A conventional technique is applied to small arrays to synthesise a sector beam and there is limited control over the radiation pattern. It is shown that the mutual coupling has significant effect on the array radiation pattern and mitigation is necessary for optimum performance (chapter 6). Furthermore, wideband phased arrays may have a natural limitation of the HPBW in low gain applications and minimisation of the variation becomes important. Also the SLL variations for wideband antenna arrays in the presence of mutual coupling considerably degrade the radiation pattern. The mutual coupling degrades significantly the radiation pattern performance in case of small scanning wideband arrays (chapter 7). It is the primary goal of this thesis to develop an optimisation scheme thatis applied in the above scenarios (chapters 3 & 4). The only degree of freedom assumed is the array excitation. Optimised amplitude and phase for each element in the array are determined by the proposed scheme, concurrently. The deterministic optimisation techniques reported in the literature for the pattern synthesis may involve complicated problem modelling. The heuristic opti-misation techniques generally are computationally expensive. The proposedIntelligent z-space Boundary Condition-Particle Swarm Optimiser (IzBC-PSO)is based on a heuristic algorithm. This scheme can be applied to a wider rangeof problems without significant modifications and requires fewer computationscompared to the competing techniques.In order to verify the performance of IzBC-PSO antenna array measure-ments were performed in the receiving mode only using the online and offlinedigital beamforming setups described in chapter 8. The measurement resultsshow that the proposed scheme may be successfully applied with both onlineand offline digital beamformers for a practical small array (chapter 8).

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (Electronic Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / PhD / unrestricted

Le cancer du pancréas est un problème majeur de santé publique. Le mauvais pronostic de l'adénocarcinome du pancréas est lié à un diagnostic tardif, une progression rapide, et à une mauvaise réponse aux traitements médicaux disponibles. Une caractérisation complète des altérations génétiques moléculaires sont aujourd'hui nécessaires pour permettre une détection plus précoce et identifier/élaborer de nouvelles thérapies ciblées dans le traitement de l'ADK du pancréas. En utilisant la technique d'hybridation génomique comparative, nous avons étudié les altérations du génome de 39 ADK. Plusieurs pertes récurrentes ont été observées, ainsi que des gains de matériel génétique. A partir de ces résultats, nous avons voulu aller plus loin en identifiant les gènes qui pourraient avoir des conséquences au niveau transcriptomique. A partir de données publiques, nous avons comparé les profils d'expression d'ADK (n=419) et de pancréas normal (n=105). Parmi les gènes trouvés amplifiés et/ou gagnés par aCGH, 170 (48%) étaient surexprimés dans les ADK par rapport au tissus normal. Les principales voies de signalisation impliquées touchaient la régulation du cycle cellulaire, les voies TP53 et TGFß. Parmi les gènes délétés en aCGH, 141 (41%) étaient sous exprimés dans les ADK du pancréas par rapport au tissus normal et étaient essentiellement liés au « métabolome » de la cellule pancréatique. Enfin, nous avons identifié une dizaine de gènes dont l'expression pourrait être liée à la survie des patients. Certains de ces gènes pourraient être des candidats à tester en tant que biomarqueurs pronostic ou cibles pour le développement de nouvelles thérapeutiques. / Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDCA) is a major public health problem in France and worldwide. The inoperability and the poor prognosis of the PDCA are due to late diagnosis, rapid tumor progression (>80% of patients displayed metastases at diagnosis), early recurrences after resection, and poor response to available therapies. Innovative approaches and a comprehensive characterization of molecular genetic alterations are dearly needed to help develop techniques of early detection, identify new molecular targets and devise novel targeted-therapies (Hidalgo, 2010). Using high-resolution array-comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), we studied the genome alterations of 39 fine-needle aspirations from PDCA. Recurrent losses were observed and comprised several known tumor suppressor genes. We identified frequent genetic gains. With this study, we decided to go one step further by identifying genes that might also be deregulated at the transcriptomic level. We started our analysis with a population of PDCA (n=419) versus normal pancreas (n = 105). Among the 352 genes found amplified and/or gained by aCGH, 170 (48%) were up regulated at the transcriptional level in PDCA compared to normal pancreatic tissues. Major pathways involved were cell cycle, TP53 and TGFß. Among the genes located in regions of losses, 141 (41%) were down regulated in PDCA compared to normal tissues. Furthermore, some genes were found related to a patients' survival With this study, we highlighted novels genes associated to PDCA oncogenesis. Some of those candidates should be further investigated as prognosis markers or as potential targets for new therapeutic approaches.

Broadband antenna arrays have become increasingly popular for various imaging applications, such as radio telescopes and radar, where high sensitivity and resolution are required. High sensitivity requires the development of large scale broadband arrays capable of imaging distant sources at many different wavelengths, in addition to overcoming noise and jamming signals. The design of large scale broadband antenna arrays requires large number antennas, increasing the cost and complexity of the overall system. Moreover, noise sources often vary, depending on their wavelengths and angular locations. This increases the overall design complexity particularly for broadband applications where the performance depends not only on the required bandwidth, but also on the frequency band.This thesis provides a study of broadband antenna array systems for large scale applications. The study investigates different tradeoffs associated with designing such systems and drives a novel design approach to optimize both their cost and performance for a wide range of applications. In addition, the thesis includes measurements of a suitable array to validate the computational predictions. Moreover, the thesis also demonstrates how this study can be utilized to optimize a broadband antenna array system suitable for a low frequency radio telescope.

abstract: With the exponential growth in video content over the period of the last few years, analysis of videos is becoming more crucial for many applications such as self-driving cars, healthcare, and traffic management. Most of these video analysis application uses deep learning algorithms such as convolution neural networks (CNN) because of their high accuracy in object detection. Thus enhancing the performance of CNN models become crucial for video analysis. CNN models are computationally-expensive operations and often require high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) for acceleration. However, for real-time applications in an energy-thermal constrained environment such as traffic management, GPUs are less preferred because of their high power consumption, limited energy efficiency. They are challenging to fit in a small place. To enable real-time video analytics in emerging large scale Internet of things (IoT) applications, the computation must happen at the network edge (near the cameras) in a distributed fashion. Thus, edge computing must be adopted. Recent studies have shown that field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are highly suitable for edge computing due to their architecture adaptiveness, high computational throughput for streaming processing, and high energy efficiency. This thesis presents a generic OpenCL-defined CNN accelerator architecture optimized for FPGA-based real-time video analytics on edge. The proposed CNN OpenCL kernel adopts a highly pipelined and parallelized 1-D systolic array architecture, which explores both spatial and temporal parallelism for energy efficiency CNN acceleration on FPGAs. The large fan-in and fan-out of computational units to the memory interface are identified as the limiting factor in existing designs that causes scalability issues, and solutions are proposed to resolve the issue with compiler automation. The proposed CNN kernel is highly scalable and parameterized by three architecture parameters, namely pe_num, reuse_fac, and vec_fac, which can be adapted to achieve 100% utilization of the coarse-grained computation resources (e.g., DSP blocks) for a given FPGA. The proposed CNN kernel is generic and can be used to accelerate a wide range of CNN models without recompiling the FPGA kernel hardware. The performance of Alexnet, Resnet-50, Retinanet, and Light-weight Retinanet has been measured by the proposed CNN kernel on Intel Arria 10 GX1150 FPGA. The measurement result shows that the proposed CNN kernel, when mapped with 100% utilization of computation resources, can achieve a latency of 11ms, 84ms, 1614.9ms, and 990.34ms for Alexnet, Resnet-50, Retinanet, and Light-weight Retinanet respectively when the input feature maps and weights are represented using 32-bit floating-point data type. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2019

Wideband beamforming have been widely used in modern radar systems. One of the powerful wideband beamforming techniques that is capable of achieving a high selectivity over a wide bandwidth is the nested array (NA) beamformer. Such a beamformer consists of nested antenna arrays, 2-D spatio-temporal filters, and multirate filterbanks. Speed of operation is bounded by the speed of the hardware implementation. This dissertation presents the use of a systematic methodology for design space exploration of the NA beamformer basic building blocks. The efficient systolic array design in terms of the highest possible clock speed of each block was selected for hardware implementation. The proposed systolic array designs and the conventional designs were implemented in FPGA hardware to verify their functionality and compare their erformance. The implementations results confirm that the proposed systolic array implementations are faster and requires less hardware resources than the published designs. The overall beamformer FPGA implementation is constructed based on the analysis of efficient systolic arrays designs of the beamformer building blocks. The implemented overall structure is then validated to ensure its proper operation. Further, the implementation performance is evaluated in terms of accuracy and error analysis in comparison to the MATLAB simulations. The new methodology is based on the systematic methodology to close the gap between the modern wideband radar I/O rates and the silicon operating speed. This new metodology is applied to the interpolator block as an example. The proposed methodology is simulated and tested using MATLAB object oriented programming (OOP) to ensure the proper operation. / Graduate / 2020-11-17