Thesis. 1975. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics. / Bibliography: leaf 112. / by George W. Pfeiffer. / M.S.

During the last decade medical applications of textile sensors have been growing rapidly and textile sensors are the focal research point for many sensor projects. Textile sensors are still not available as a mainstream product to replace conventional electric sensors and electrodes. Textile sensors can be integrated in a textile garment to measure vital signs of a human being. In this regard stretch sensors are able to measure breathing rate of a person. In this project we use seamless knitting technique to make stretch sensors using conductive fibers. The resistance difference between stretching and relaxing of these sensors gives a pattern for human breathing. Four knitting structures with different conductive fibers are made and tested with cyclic tester to construct a graph between resistance and time to find the knitting structure which gives the best results. Tests are also done to check the results after washing. These sensors can be used in breathing monitoring of patients during daily life. / Program: Master programme in Textile Technology

The market for higher data rate communication is driving the semiconductor industry to develop new techniques of writing at smaller scales, while continuing to scale bandwidth at low power consumption. The question arises of how to continue to sustain this trend. Silicon photonic (SiPh) devices offer a potential solution to the electronic interconnect bandwidth bottleneck. SiPh leverages the technology commensurate of decades of fabrication development with the unique functionality of next-generation optical interconnects. Finer fabrication techniques have allowed for manufacturing physical characteristics of waveguide structures that can support multiple modes in a single waveguide. By refining modal characteristics in photonic waveguide structures, through mode multiplexing with the asymmetric y-junction and microring resonator, higher aggregate data bandwidth is demonstrated via various combinations of spatial multiplexing, broadening applications supported by the integrated platform. The main contributions of this dissertation are summarized as follows. Experimental demonstrations of new forms of spatial multiplexing combined together exhibit feasibility of data transmission through mode-division multiplexing (MDM), mode-division and wavelength-division multiplexing (MDM-WDM), and mode-division and polarization-division multiplexing (MDM-PDM) through a C-band, Si photonic platform. Error-free operation through mode multiplexers and demultiplexers show how data can be viably scaled on multiple modes and with existing spatial domains simultaneously. This work opens up new avenues for scaling bandwidth capacity through leveraging orthogonal domains available on-chip, beyond what had previously been employed like WDM and time-division multiplexing (TDM). Furthermore, we explore expanding device channel support from two to three arms. Finding that a slight mismatch in the third arm can increase crosstalk contributions considerably, especially when increasing data rate, we explore a methodical way to design the asymmetric y-junction device by considering its angles and multiplexer/demultiplexer arm width. By taking into consideration device fabrication variations, we turn towards optimizing device performance post-fabrication. Through ModePROP simulations, optimizing device performance dynamically post-fabrication is analyzed, through either electro-optical or thermo-optical means. By biasing the arm introducing the slight spectral offset, we can quantifiably improve device performance. Scaling bandwidth is experimentally demonstrated through the device at 3 modes, 2 wavelengths, and 40 Gb/s data rate for 240 Gb/s aggregate bandwidth, with the potential to reduce power penalty per the device optimization process we described. A main motivation for this on-chip spatial multiplexing is the need to reduce costs. As the laser source serves as the greatest power consumer in an optical system, mode-division multiplexing and other forms of spatial multiplexing can be implemented to push its potentially prohibitive cost metrics down. While the device introduces loss, through imperfect mode isolation, as device fabrication improves, tolerance can increase as well. Meanwhile, the rate that laser power consumption increases as supported wavelengths scales is shown to be much faster than the loss introduced by scaling on-chip bandwidth multi-modally. Future generations of ultra-high capacity devices through spatial multiplexing is explored. Already various systems can be implemented multimodally, with the design features serving as useful for other components. Central to photonic network-on-chips, a multimodal switch fabric, composed of microring resonators, is demonstrated to have error-free operation of 1x2 switching of 10 Gb/s data. These contributions aim to scale bandwidth to ultra-high capacity, while ameliorating any imperfect design, through multiple routes conjoined with on-chip spatial multiplexing, and they constitute the bulk of this dissertation. For the latter part, we turn to the issue of integrating a photonic device for dynamic power reallocation in a system. Specifically, we utilize a 4x4 nonblocking switch fabric composed of Mach-Zehnder interferometers that switch both electro-optically and thermo-optically at ns and μs rates respectively. In order to demonstrate an intelligent platform capable of dynamically multicasting data and reallocating power as needed by the system, we must first initialize the switch fabric to control with an electronic interface. A dithering mechanism, whereby exact cross, bar, and sub-percentage states are enforced through the device, is described here. Such a method could be employed for actuating the device table of bias values to states automatically. We then employ a dynamic power reallocation algorithm through a data acquisition unit, showing real-time channel recovery for channels experiencing power loss by diverting power from paths that could tolerate it. The data that is being multicast through the system is experimentally shown to be error-free at 40 Gb/s data rate, when transmitting from one to three clients and going from automatic bar/cross states to equalized power distribution. For the last portion of this topic, the switch fabric was inserted into a high-performance computing system. In order to run benchmarks at 10 Gb/s data ontop of the switch fabric, a newer model of the control plane was implemented to toggle states according to the command issued by the server. Such a programmable mechanism will prove necessary in future implementations of optical subsystems embedded inside larger systems, like data centers. Beyond the specific control plane demonstrated, the idea of an intelligent photonic layer can be applied to alleviate many kinds of optical channel abnormalities or accommodate for switching based on different patterns in data transmission. Besides spatial-multiplexing, expanding on-chip bandwidth can be accomplished by extension of the wavelength detection regime to a longer regime. Experimental demonstration of photodetection at 1.9 μm is shown with Si+-doped Si photodetectors at 1 Gb/s data operation featuring responsivities of .03 AW−1 at 5 V bias. The same way of processing these Si ribbed waveguide photodetectors can garner even longer wavelength operation at 2.2 μm wavelength. Finally, the experimental demonstration of a coherent perfect absorption Si modulator is exhibited, showing a viable extinction ratio of 24.5 dB. Using this coherent perfect absorption mechanism to demodulate signals, there is the added benefit of differential reception. Currently, an automated process for data collection is employed at a faster time scale than instabilities present in fibers in the setup with future implementations eliminating the off-chip phase modulator for greater signal stability. The field of SiPh has developed to a stage where specific application domains can take off and compete according to industrial-level standards. The work in this dissertation contributes to experimental demonstration of a newly developing area of mode-division multiplexing for substantially increasing bandwidth on-chip. While implementing the discussed photonic devices in dynamic systems, various attributes of integrated photonics are leveraged with existing electronic technologies. Future generations of computing systems should then be designed by implementing both system and device level considerations.

Les réseaux de capteurs sans fil sont conçus dans le but de remplir différentes tâches de surveillance dans des conditions environnementales variées. Ces petits appareils électroniques sont capables de détecter, traiter et transmettre des données environnementales avec des communications multi-sauts et peuvent par conséquent aussi se coordonner. En même temps, ces dispositifs ont des ressources limitées (mémoire, capacités de calcul) et doivent fonctionner le plus souvent sur des batteries. C’est pour ces raisons que les recherches menées dans le domaine des réseaux de capteurs possèdent naturellement une forte partie qui concerne la réduction de la consommation d’énergie et une auto-organisation du réseau.Nos recherches considèrent les applications critiques de surveillance. Ces applications peuvent avoir des exigences très différentes des réseaux de capteurs traditionnels. De plus, nous utilisons des capteurs images, dont l’activité est définie en fonction de la criticité de l’application. Un ordonnancement basé sur la criticité permet de définir des nœuds sentinelles qui possèderont une vitesse de capture plus grande, cela afin d’avoir une probabilité plus élevée de détecter des intrusions et d’alerter leurs nœuds voisins. Au niveau de la couche de contrôle d’accès au medium (couche MAC), les approches alternant activité-sommeil (consistant à allumer et éteindre la radio de manière cyclique) sont utilisées pour préserver l’énergie et prolonger la durée de vie du réseau. Cependant, tout en conservant l’énergie, les applications critiques de surveillance ne doivent pas compromettre la qualité de la surveillance et le réseau doit être toujours en mesure de propager rapidement les messages d’alerte. Notre but est de définir un protocole MAC qui pourrait réduire la latence de propagation d’alerte ainsi que de prolonger la durée de vie du réseau. Nous proposons tout d’abord une approche originale pour déterminer dynamiquement la durée de la période d’activité radio des nœuds pour augmenter la probabilité de propager rapidement les alertes. Les résultats des simulations ont confirmé que notre approche réussit à améliorer la réactivité du système par rapport à une approche statique. En même temps, notre proposition permet de réduire considérablement la consommation d’énergie du réseau. Ensuite, nous avons implémenter notre approche sur des capteurs réels et les résultats obtenus sont très proches des résultats de simulation. / Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are designed for the purpose of completing different monitoring tasks under various environmental conditions. The small electronic devices called sensors are capable of sensing, processing and communicating the environmental data through multi-hop communication and coordination. These devices have limited resources (memory, computing capabilities) and usually run on batteries. This is the reason the research on wireless sensor networks have been focused on energy efficiency and self-organization of the network. We consider mission-critical surveillance applications in our research work. These applications can have different requirements than traditional WSNs. In addition, we use image sensor nodes, whose activity is defined based on criticality of the application. The criticality-based scheduling scheme defines sentry nodes with faster capture rates, to have higher probability to detect intrusions and to alert neighbor nodes. At Medium Access Control (MAC) Layer level, duty cycled approaches are used to preserve energy and prolong the network lifetime. However, while conserving energy, mission-critical surveillance applications cannot compromise on quality of surveillance and the network should still be able to quickly propagate the alert messages. In this thesis, we propose a low latency, energy efficient adaptive MAC protocol. We first propose an original approach to dynamically determine the duty-cycle length of sensor nodes to increase the probability of quick propagation of alerts. Simulation results confirmed that our approach succeeds in improving the system responsiveness when compared to a static duty-cycling approach. At the same time, our proposition considerably reduces the energy consumption of the network. Then, we implemented our approach on sensor node hardware and results were found to be very close to our simulation results.

Ao longo dos tempos, a produção de notícias e reportagens precisou se adaptar à modernização do jornal impresso, ao surgimento do rádio, da televisão, mais recentemente, à internet e, por último (por enquanto), aos dispositivos móveis digitais como smartphones e tablets. Cada um desses períodos foi marcado por novos formatos de produzir, distribuir e consumir jornalismo. Dentro deste caminho evolutivo está o objeto de pesquisa desta tese que envolve a busca por formatos narrativos que se adaptem de forma mais personalizada aos dispositivos móveis digitais, às suas características específicas e potencialidades e, ainda, ao jornalismo que se reconfigura a partir das transformações da contemporaneidade. A massiva adoção dos dispositivos móveis digitais entre o público e a evolução tecnológica criam possibilidades de formatação e distribuição jornalísticas mais interativas e ubíquas se comparadas ao que havia antes. Enquanto novos meios de comunicação, os smartphones oferecem qualidades importantes para a redefinição do consumo de informação na atualidade, entre elas estão a portabilidade, a ubiquidade e a sensibilidade ao contexto do usuário. A partir dessa compreensão, entendemos, neste trabalho, que o jornalismo e sua conceituação precisam acompanhar esse processo evolutivo, o que nos leva à adoção do conceito de jornalismo ubíquo e também à elaboração de categorias constituintes desse conceito. Em seguimento a isto, também adotamos o conceito de narrativa sistêmica para fazer parte de nossa compreensão do formato atual dos conteúdos. Esses dois conceitos se unem a uma fundamentação complementar ligada ao design de navegação e interface, à experiência do usuário e à usabilidade para investigar as características específicas do jornalismo ubíquo e do seu formato, e em que patamar está sua adoção pelos aplicativos para smartphones dos jornais The New York Times, The Guardian, El País e O Estado de S. Paulo. Ao final, expomos o momento atual desses produtos jornalísticos e suas diferentes soluções de apresentação para as potencialidades existentes a partir do desenvolvimento tecnológico. / Over the years, the news production has had to adapt itself to the modernization of the printed newspaper, to the emergence of radio, television, more recently to the internet, and finally (for now) to digital mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Each of these periods was marked by new formats for producing, distributing and consuming journalism. Within this evolutionary path is located the research object of this thesis that involves the search for narrative formats that adapt in a more personalized way to the digital mobile devices, their specific characteristics and potentialities and also to the journalism that is reconfigured from the transformations of the contemporaneity. The massive adoption of digital mobile devices within the public and the technological evolution create more interactive and ubiquitous possibilities of formatting and distributing journalistic media than in the past. As a new media, smartphones offer important qualities for today\'s information consumption redefinition, among which are portability, ubiquity, and user context sensitivity. From this understanding, we assume in this work that journalism and its conception need to accompany this evolutionary process, which leads us to adopt the concept of ubiquitous journalism and also to the elaboration of constituent categories of this concept. Following this, we also adopt the concept of systemic narrative to be part of our understanding of the current format of the contents. These two concepts are coupled with a complementary basis linked to navigation and interface design, user experience, and usability to investigate the specific characteristics of ubiquitous journalism and its format, and at what level it is adopted by the smartphone applications of the newspapers The New York Times, The Guardian, El País and O Estado de S. Paulo. At the end, we present the current moment of these journalistic products and their different solutions of presentation to the potentialities emerged from the technological development.

In recent years, additive manufacturing (AM) has become an increasingly promising method used for the production of structural metallic components. There are a number of reasons why AM methods are attractive, including the ability to produce complex geometries into a near-net shape and the rapid transition from design to production. Ti-6Al-4V is a titanium alloy frequently used in the aerospace industry which is receiving considerable attention as a good candidate for processing via electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM). The Sciaky EBAM method combines a high-powered electron beam, weld-wire feedstock, and a large build chamber, enabling the production of large structural components. In order to gain wide acceptance of EBAM of Ti-6Al-4V as a viable manufacturing method, it is important to understand broadly the microstructural features that are present in large-scale depositions, including specifically: the morphology, distribution and texture of the phases present. To achieve such an understanding, stereological methods were used to populate a database quantifying key microstructural features in Ti-6Al-4V including volume fraction of phases, a lath width, colony scale factor, and volume fraction of basket weave type microstructure. Microstructural features unique to AM, such as elongated grains and banded structures, were also characterized. Hardness and tensile testing were conducted and the results were related to the microstructural morphology and sample orientation. Lastly, fractured surfaces and defects were investigated. The results of these activities provide insight into the process-structure-properties relationships found in EBAM processed Ti-6Al-4V.

In this study an initial assessment of the composition – microstructure – property relationships in binary and ternary Ti – based systems are made possible using LENSTM technology. Laser Engineering Net Shaping (LENSTM), a rapid prototyping, directed laser deposition methodology of additive manufacturing (AM) was used to create bulk homogenous specimens that are compositionally graded. Compositionally graded specimens were made possible by incorporating elemental blends of powder during the LENSTM process. While there have been numerous studies assessing the influence of common elements (e.g., V, Mo, Al, and Cr) on the resulting microstructure in titanium alloys, other elements have been neglected. A systematic study of the Ti – Fe – Al ternary system based upon varying compositions of the eutectoid former, Fe with Al to stabilize the a and b phases respectively has also been neglected. This research effort focuses on exploiting the LENSTM process by rapidly assessing the composition – microstructure – property relationships in a combinatorial approach for the Ti – W, Ti – Fe, and Ti – Fe – Al systems. Compositionally graded specimens of Ti – xW (0<x<40wt.%(14.79at.%)), Ti – xFe (0<x<35wt.%(36.37at.%)), and Ti – xFe – yAl (0<x<40wt.%(36.37at.%)), y=5,10, 15wt.%) have been heat treated to also assess the influence of thermal history on microstructural features such as phase composition and volume fraction. Lastly, a Ti – xMo (0<x<40wt.%(24.96at.%)) compositionally graded specimen was deposited to re-assess the Mo-equivalency nature of W, as well as assess the role of phase separation in microstructural evolution at temperatures above and below the invariant point (~695°C) of the Ti – W binary system.

Glucose isomerase (GI) catalyzes the conversion of D-glucose to D-fructose in vitro. It is one of the bulkiest commercial enzymes, essential for the mass production of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and crystalline fructose. / In this study, the effects of nitrogen sources, carbon sources, expression vectors, host strains, bacterial (Vitreoscilla) hemoglobin, selective pressure, plasmid stability and fermentation process on the GI production were investigated. The results showed that E. coli could express cloned thermostable GI at high expression level. E. coli transformed with the recombinant plasmid P-lac-GI gave the best result in term of total GI production and expression level. Corn steep liquor could be used as a cheap alternative nitrogen source for what was in LB medium. The concentration of glucose affected the expression level of GI significantly. Replacement of the ampicillin resistance gene by kanamycin resistance gene improved the plasmid stability leading to high productivity of GI in fed-batch fermentation. A suicide system could further improve the plasmid stability resulting in a high productivity of GI. A feeding strategy for fed-batch fermentation with the optimized parameters was developed to result in the production of up to 3g/L recombinant GI, which constituted 50% of the total soluble proteins. The total yield was 5-fold higher than that from flask experiments and 7-fold higher than the highest ever recorded. The expression level was also 100% higher than it was in other reports. / Liu Zhaoming. / "August 2005." / Advisers: J. Wang; W. P. Fong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: B, page: 3780. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-154). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Glucose isomerase (GI) catalyzes the isomerization of glucose to fructose and consequently is one of the bulkiest industrial enzyme for the manufacture of high fructose corn syrup and crystalline fructose. The GI is used in industry mainly in the form of immobilized enzyme. / In this work, the immobilization of GI had been studied by several methods: ion exchange adsorption, covalent binding, alginate cells entrapment and cells cross-linking. Three kinds of carrier support (ion exchange resin, epoxy resin and amino resin) have been used in the immobilization of cells-free enzyme; the whole cells immobilization of GI by cross-linking agents polyethyleneimid and glutaraldehyde were critically examined. The results show that the cells cross-linking is the best method to prepare the immobilized GI products, as it is high in specific activity and thermostability, and low the cost. The method is likely to make significant contribution to the field of immobilization, its application has expanding rapidly in many walks of the society, including environment protection, food and pharmaceutical industries. / Jin, Caike. / "August 2005." / Adviser: Jun Wang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: B, page: 3521. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-152). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Imitation learning refers to an agent's ability to mimic a desired behaviour by learning from observations. The field is rapidly gaining attention due to recent advances in computational and communication capabilities as well as rising demand for intelligent applications. The goal of imitation learning is to describe the desired behaviour by providing demonstrations rather than instructions. This enables agents to learn complex behaviours with general learning methods that require minimal task specific information. However, imitation learning faces many challenges. The objective of this thesis is to advance the state of the art in imitation learning by adopting deep learning methods to address two major challenges of learning from demonstrations. Firstly, representing the demonstrations in a manner that is adequate for learning. We propose novel Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) based methods to automatically extract feature representations from raw visual demonstrations and learn to replicate the demonstrated behaviour. This alleviates the need for task specific feature extraction and provides a general learning process that is adequate for multiple problems. The second challenge is generalizing a policy over unseen situations in the training demonstrations. This is a common problem because demonstrations typically show the best way to perform a task and don't offer any information about recovering from suboptimal actions. Several methods are investigated to improve the agent's generalization ability based on its initial performance. Our contributions in this area are three fold. Firstly, we propose an active data aggregation method that queries the demonstrator in situations of low confidence. Secondly, we investigate combining learning from demonstrations and reinforcement learning. A deep reward shaping method is proposed that learns a potential reward function from demonstrations. Finally, memory architectures in deep neural networks are investigated to provide context to the agent when taking actions. Using recurrent neural networks addresses the dependency between the state-action sequences taken by the agent. The experiments are conducted in simulated environments on 2D and 3D navigation tasks that are learned from raw visual data, as well as a 2D soccer simulator. The proposed methods are compared to state of the art deep reinforcement learning methods. The results show that deep learning architectures can learn suitable representations from raw visual data and effectively map them to atomic actions. The proposed methods for addressing generalization show improvements over using supervised learning and reinforcement learning alone. The results are thoroughly analysed to identify the benefits of each approach and situations in which it is most suitable.