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Dynamic channel assignment algorithms allow wireless nodes to switch channels when their traffic loads exceed certain thresholds. These thresholds represent estimations of their throughput capacities. Unfortunately, the threshold estimation may not be accurate due to co-channel interference (CCI) and adjacent-channel interference (ACI), especially with high traffic loads in dense networks. When the link capacity is over-estimated, these channel assignment algorithms are not effective. This is because channel switch is not triggered even with overloaded data traffic and the link quality decreases significantly as the channel is overloaded. When the link capacity is under-estimated, the link is under utilized. Moreover, when link traffic load increases from time to time, channel switch occurs frequently. Such frequent channel switches increase latency and degrade throughput, and can even cause network wide channel oscillations. In this paper, we propose a novel threshold-based control system, called \emph{balanced control system} (BCS). The proposed threshold-based control policy consist of deciding, according to the real time traffic load and interference, whether to switch to another channel,{which channel should be switched to and how to perform the switch. Our control model is based on a fuzzy logic control. The threshold which assists to make the channel switch decisions, could be deduced dynamically according to the real-time traffic of each node. We also design a novel dynamic channel assignment scheme, which is used for the selection of the new channel. The channel switch scheduler is provided to perform channel-switch processing for sender and receiver over enhanced routing protocols. We implement our system in NS2, and the simulation results show that with our proposed system, the performance improves by 12.3\%-72.8\% in throughput and reduces 23.2\%-52.3\% in latency. / Computer and Information Science

In this thesis we consider design methodology and resource allocation for IEEE 802.11 ESS mesh networks. In such networks, solar powered access points can be used to significantly reduce the installation cost of outdoor WLAN hotzones. SolarMESH is a network of this kind and is currently in its second year of an operational deployment. In SolarMESH, the cost of the solar panel/battery can be a significant fraction of the total, and therefore reducing AP power consumption is very important. Unfortunately, access point power saving is not currently supported under IEEE 802.11, but this would be very useful in future versions of the standard. A design methodology is presented for sustainable solar powered ESS mesh networks, assuming a power saving version of IEEE 802.11. First, a load profile for each network node is determined. The load profile is a time function which represents the average workload for which the node in question is designed. For a given geographic location, public meteorological data is then used together with the averaged offered capacity profile to provision each node subject to a target outage probability. The design is statistical since future load conditions and solar insolation may not exactly match that for which the node was designed. For this reason, a control algorithm is introduced which attempts to maintain outage-free operation of the node by introducing a capacity deficit under certain conditions. Results are presented showing that significant resource reductions are possible using the proposed resource allocation methodology. The results also give a strong motivation for including access point power saving in outdoor ESS mesh networks. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

The last couple of years have seen an explosive growth in smartphone sales. Additionally, the computational power of modern smartphones has been increasing at a high rate. For example, the popular iPhone 4S has a 1 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM [5]. Other popular smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus S also have similar specications. These smartphones are as powerful as desktop computers of the 2005 era, and the tight integration of many dierent hardware chipsets in these mobile devices makes for a unique mobile platform that can be exploited for capabilities other than traditional uses of a phone, such as talk and text [4]. In this work, the concept using smartphones that run the Android operating system for distributed computing over a wireless mesh network is explored. This is also known as wireless distributed computing (WDC). The complexities of WDC on mobile devices are different from traditional distributed computing because of, among other things, the unreliable wireless communications channel and the limited power available to each computing node. This thesis develops the theoretical foundations for WDC. A mathematical model representing the total amount of resources required to distribute a task with WDC is developed. It is shown that given a task that is distributable, under certain conditions, there exists a theoretical minimum amount of resources that can be used in order to perform a task using WDC. Finally, the WDC architecture is developed, an Android App implementation of the WDC architecture is tested, and it is shown in a practical application that using WDC to perform a task provides a performance increase over processing the job locally on the Android OS. / Master of Science

War bisher die Gestalt von Bauteilen und Baugruppen in Konstruktionen sehr stark durch ihre Fertigungsverfahren beeinflusst, so ändern sich diese Vorgaben durch die Verwendung von 3D- Druck auf beinahe revolutionäre Art und Weise. Und somit werden Ansätze salonfähig, die bisher doch eher selten in Anwendung waren, wie z.B. Gitterstrukturen oder Topologieoptimierung. Diese finden nun wieder häufiger ihren Weg in die Bauteil- und Baugruppenstrukturen. Die Verwendung birgt aber auch damit einhergehende Herausforderungen, da sich z.B. die Bauteilgrößen nach einer Topologieoptimierung drastisch vergrößern und z.B. auch die Glättung der Teile für den Druck, sowie die Rückführung in die CAD-Systeme, häufig noch eine ungelöste Aufgabe darstellen. Diese Ansätze müssen bezogen auf den PLM Gedanken, prozesstechnisch durchdacht und entsprechend implementiert werden. Der Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit der dafür notwendigen Prozesskette vom CAD-Model über die Simulationsverfahren wie Topologieoptimierung oder Gitterstrukturen, Glättung von Strukturen u.v.m. sowie deren Rückführung ins CAD/PLM.

Title: IVA Movement Quality Improvement for the Virtual Environment of Unreal Tournament 2004 Author: Bohuslav Macháč Department / Institute: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor of the master thesis: Mgr. Jakub Gemrot, Department of Software and Computer Science Education Abstract: PogamutUT2004 is an extension of the Pogamut platform designed for developing intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) in Unreal Tournament 2004. Navigation of IVAs in Pogamut is handled by a navigation system, which uses a navigation graph as an environment abstraction. Navigation mesh is a new, more advanced abstraction, but the existing navigation system is not capable of using its advantages. We created a new navigation system, which exploits advantages of the navigation mesh and solves several other issues of the old one. We show that the new navigation system improves the quality of navigation. To demonstrate the quality improvement, an evaluation framework was created for the comparison of navigation systems. Systems were compared in terms of total number of significant paths on the map, which the system is able to follow, length of the path and time of the navigation. We selected 18 different maps for thorough evaluation and we performed the basic evaluation on 58 other maps. The new system is more...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) são pequenos RNAs não codificadores de proteínas que atuam principalmente como silenciadores pós-transcricionais, inibindo a tradução de RNAs mensageiros. Evidências crescentes revelam que tais moléculas desempenham papéis críticos em muitos processos biológicos importantes. Uma vez que não existem anotações de termos de miRNAs na Gene Ontology (GO), tampouco um banco de dados de referência com anotações funcionais dos mesmos, o cálculo da medida de similaridade entre miRNAs de forma direta não possui um padrão estabelecido. Por outro lado, a existência de bancos de dados de genes-alvo de miRNAs, como o TarBase, e bases de dados contendo informações sobre associações de miRNAs e doenças humanas, como o HMDD, nos permite inferir a similaridade funcional dos miRNAs indiretamente, por meio da análise de seus genes-alvo na GO ou entre suas doenças relacionadas na ontologia MeSH. Além disso, de acordo com a estrutura da ontologia de miRNAs OMIT, um miRNA também pode ser anotado com outras informações, tais como a sua natureza de atuação como oncogênico ou supressor de tumor, o organismo em que se encontra, o tipo de experimento em que foi encontrado, suas associações com doenças, genes-alvo, proteínas e eventos patológicos. Dessa forma, a similaridade entre miRNAs pode ser inferida com base na combinação de um conjunto de informações contidas nas respectivas anotações, de forma que possamos obter um aproveitamento de várias informações existentes, definindo assim um cálculo de similaridade funcional composta. Assim, neste trabalho, propomos a criação e aplicação de um método chamado CFSim, aplicado sobre a OMIT e que utiliza a ontologia de doenças, MeSH, e a ontologia de genes, GO, para calcular a similaridade entre dois miRNAs, juntamente com informações contidas em suas anotações. A validação de nosso método foi realizada por meio da comparação com a similaridade funcional inferida considerando diferentes famílias de miRNAs e os resultados obtidos mostraram que nosso método é eficiente, no sentido de que a similaridade entre miRNAs pertencentes à mesma família é maior que a similaridade entre miRNAs de famílias distintas. Ainda, em comparação com os métodos de similaridade funcional já existentes na literatura, o CFSim obteve melhores resultados. Adicionalmente, para tornarmos viável a utilização do método proposto, foi projetado e implementado um ambiente contendo a infraestrutura necessária para que pesquisadores possam incluir dados obtidos de novas descobertas e consultar as informações sobre um determinado miRNA, assim como calcular a similaridade entre dois miRNAs, baseada no método proposto. / MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNA that mainly negatively regulate gene expression by inhibiting translation of target RNAs. Increasing evidences show that such molecules play critical roles in many important biological processes. Since there are no terms of miRNAs annotations in Gene Ontology (GO), nor a database with microRNAs functional annotations, directly calculating the functional similarity between miRNAs does not have an estabilished pattern aproach. However, the existence of miRNAs target genes database, such as TarBase, and a miRNAs-disease associations database, such as HMDD, allow us to indirectly infer functional similarity of miRNAs through the analysis of their target genes in GO or between their related diseases in MeSH. Moreover, according to the structure of the ontology of miRNAs OMIT, a miRNA can also be annotated with other information, such as if it acts as an oncogene or a tumor suppressor, the organism that it belongs, the experiment in which it was found, its associations with diseases, target genes, proteins and pathological events. Thus, miRNAs similarity can be inferred based on the combination of a broad set of information contained in their annotations, indeed, we can use all available information defining the calculation of a composed functional similarity. In this study, we propose the creation and application of CFSim method applied to the OMIT using the diseases ontology, MeSH, and gene ontology, GO, to compute miRNAs similarity based on different information in their annotations. We validated our method by comparing with functional similarity inferred by miRNA families and the results showed that our method is efficient in sense that the functional similarity between miRNAs in the same family was greater compared to other miRNAs from distinct families. Furthermore, in comparison with existing methods of functional similarity in the literature until the present day, the CFSim showed better results. Finally, to make feasible the use of the proposed method, an environment was designed and implemented, containing the necessary infrastructure so that researchers can include data from new discoveries and see information about a particular miRNA, as well as calculate the similarity between two miRNAs, based in the proposed method.

Mesh generation is a fundamental precursor to finite element implementations for solution of partial differential equations in engineering and science. This dissertation advances the field in three distinct but coupled areas. A robust and fast three dimensional mesh generator for arbitrarily shaped geometries was developed. It deploys nodes throughout the domain based upon user-specified mesh density requirements. The system is integer and pixel based which eliminates round off errors, substantial memory requirements and cpu intensive calculations. Linked, but fully detachable, to the mesh generation system is a physical boundary recovery routine. Frequently, the original boundary topology is required for specific boundary condition applications or multiple material constraints. Historically, this boundary preservation was not available. An algorithm was developed, refined and optimized that recovers the original boundaries, internal and external, with fidelity. Finally, a node repositioning algorithm was developed that maximizes the minimum solid angle of tetrahedral meshes. The highly coveted 2D Delaunay property that maximizes the minimum interior angle of a triangle mesh does not extend to its 3D counterpart, to maximize the minimum solid angle of a tetrahedron mesh. As a consequence, 3D Delaunay created meshes have unacceptable sliver tetrahedral elements albeit composed of 4 high quality triangle sides. These compromised elements are virtually unavoidable and can foil an otherwise intact mesh. The numerical optimization routine developed takes any preexisting tetrahedral mesh and repositions the nodes without changing the mesh topology so that the minimum solid angle of the tetrahedrons is maximized. The overall quality enhancement of the volume mesh might be small, depending upon the initial mesh. However, highly distorted elements that create ill-conditioned global matrices and foil a finite element solver are enhanced significantly.

This thesis deals with a theoretical and an experimental exploration of squeeze film levitation (SFL) of light objects. The investigations aimed to find the important design parameters controlling this levitation mechanism and also to suggest an alternative way to implement SFL. The study, through computer modelling and experimental validation, focused on Poisson's contraction effect for generating SFL. A finite element model (ANSYS) was verified by experimental testing of five different plate designs. Each plate was subjected to a uniaxial plain stress by an arrangement of two hard piezoelectric actuators (PZT) bonded to the bottom of the plate and driven with DC or AC voltages. It was observed that pulsation of a dimple or crest shaped elastic deformation along the longitudinal axis in the central area of the plate was created because of Poisson's contraction. This Poisson's effect generated the squeeze-film between the plate and the levitated object. The separation distance between a floating lightweight object and the plate was analysed using computational fluid dynamics (ANSYS CFX) through creation of a modelling model for the air-film entrapped between the two interacting surfaces - a typical three-dimensional fluid-solid interaction system (FSI). Additionally, the levitation distance has been experimentally measured by a Laser Sensor. A satisfactory agreement has been found between model predictions and experimental results. Two levitation systems, one based on a horn transducer (Langevin type) and the other one in the form of a plain rectangular plate made of Aluminium and firmly fastened at both ends with a surface-mounted piezoelectric actuator, were compared in this thesis. Both devices were based on SFL mechanism. Evidently, the performances of both designs were greatly influenced by the design structure and in particular by the driving plate characteristics such as plate size and geometry as well as the driving boundary conditions. To this end, physical experiments were carried out and it was found that the device utilising horn-type transducer yields better levitation performance. Ultimately, the research explained the confusion between three approaches to non-contact levitation through literature review and also pointed out some essential parameters like piezoelectric actuators location, material of the driving structure, coupled-field between the actuators and the driving structure and the fluid-solid interface that was existed between the excited plate and the levitated object.