Abstract: A multiline ring anchor and a method for installing the multiline ring anchor is disclosed herein. The multiline ring anchor can be used for mooring systems for including, but limited to, arrays of offshore floating offshore wind turbines, wave power, and floating barriers.

Abstract: A computer-based method and system for teaching educational sketching includes receiving a user-generated image created in response to a learning assignment and comparing the user-generated image to a solution image to identify one or more errors in the user-generated image relative to the solution image, where the errors may include additional image elements and missing image elements. Comparing is performed by providing a solution region corresponding to an acceptable variation from the solution image and identifying one or more errors based on a presence or absence of at least a portion of a corresponding element of the user-generated image within the solution region. If errors are identified and a non-passing status is determined, a hint is displayed to the user. The hint may be the correct elements of the user-generated image, a portion of the solution image, or a combination thereof.

Abstract: A photovoltaic system for generating electrical power on farmland while minimizing reduction of solar radiation incident on ground due to shadowing, including a photovoltaic module having a first photovoltaic face defining a first plane, a normal axis extending from the first plane, a first pivot axis extending through the photovoltaic module, a second pivot axis extending through the photovoltaic module, at least one motor operationally connected to pivot the photovoltaic module about at least one pivot axis, and an electronic controller operationally connected to at least one motor. An incident solar ray strikes the photovoltaic module at an angle of incidence defined as an intersection of the incident solar ray and the normal axis. The electronic controller sends signals to the at least one motor to maintain the angle of incidence as close as possible to ninety degrees.

Abstract: Aniosotropic Ratchet Conveyor (“ARC”)-based biomolecule processing devices and related methods are described. The ARC-based biomolecule processing devices include (i) a substrate having an ARC track defined on or within the substrate and including a biomolecule receiving area, which is designed to receive biomolecule, and a reconstituting area, which is designed to contain dry reagents and is designed to receive a transport solution such that at the reconstituting area, dry reagents are reconstituted with transport solution; and (ii) a microheater area disposed at or near the biomolecule receiving area, fitted with a microheater, which is designed to heat biomolecule that is received through the biomolecule receiving area and designed to process heated biomolecule and dry reagents reconstituted with transport solution.

Abstract: A method and system for generating inverted electrical signals includes a first string of batteries connected in series, each battery having a half-bridge circuit connected in parallel and each having upper switch and lower switches. A first H-bridge circuit is connected in parallel with the first string of batteries, and a triangle wave generator generates a plurality of triangle wave signals at a given amplitude and carrier frequency. The plurality of triangle wave signals have individual triangle wave signals phase-shifted from one another. A modulation wave generator generates a modulation signal at a modulation amplitude and at twice a fundamental frequency that is less than the carrier frequency. A controller compares an instantaneous magnitude of the individual triangle wave signals to an instantaneous magnitude of the modulation signal, and outputs commands to the upper switch of a respective half-bridge circuit based on the comparison.

Abstract: This disclosure describes a sensor for detecting vibrations, particularly low-frequency vibrations. The sensor is of a cascaded gapped cantilever construction and may include a single sensing beam extending from a base to a proof mass across the plurality of gaps, a mechanical beam opposite the piezoelectric beam. The sensor may be included in a system including a housing, a support, and electronic components for converting and measuring signal. The sensor may be mounted to an item of furniture, such as a bed or a sofa, and measure physiological data including ballistocardiogram and respiratory data of a subject positioned on the furniture.

Abstract: An exemplary embodiment of an interfacial tension measurement system of the present disclosure is one in which Faraday waves or instability are formed within a vessel of fluids to be tested via electrostatic oscillations. Then, by tracking the amplitude of an applied electrical voltage having an AC harmonic load to the mixture of fluids that result in a Faraday instability, as well as the wavelength of the instability, the interfacial tension measurement system determines the interfacial tension between layers of immiscible liquids present in the vessel.

Abstract: Systems and methods for underwater communication using a MIMO acoustic channel. An acoustic receiver may receive a signal comprising information encoded in at least one transmitted symbol. Using a two-layer iterative process, the at least one transmitted symbol is estimated. The first layer of the two-layer process uses iterative exchanges of soft-decisions between an adaptive turbo equalizer and a MAP decoder. The second layer of the two-layer process uses a data-reuse procedure that adapts an equalizer vector of both a feedforward filter and a serial interference cancellation filter of the adaptive turbo equalizer using a posteriori soft decisions of the at least one transmitted symbol. After a plurality of iterations, a hard decision of the bits encoded on the at least one transmitted symbol is output from the MAP decoder.

Abstract: A lithium hydrogen titanate Li—H—Ti—O material includes Li, H, Ti, and O elements, wherein a mass percentage of Li is in a range from about 3% to about 12%, a mass percentage of H is in a range from about 0.1% to about 8%, a mass percentage of Ti is in a range from about 46% to about 56%, and a mass percentage of O is in a range from about 28% to about 50%. A lithium ion battery and a method for making the lithium hydrogen titanate Li—H—Ti—O material are also disclosed.

Abstract: Low-temperature organometallic nucleation and crystallization-based synthesis methods for the fabrication of semiconductor and metal colloidal nanocrystals with narrow size distributions and tunable, size- and shape-dependent electronic and optical properties. Methods include (1) forming a reaction mixture in a reaction vessel under an inert atmosphere that includes at least one solvent, a cationic precursor, an anionic precursor, and at least a first surface stabilizing ligand while stirring at a temperature in a range from about 50° C. to about 130° C. and (2) growing nanocrystals in the reaction mixture for a period of time while maintaining the temperature, the stirring, and the inert-gas atmosphere.

Abstract: The present inventors have recognized that proper utilization of reconfigurable event driven hardware may achieve optimum power conservation in energy constrained environments including a low power general purpose primary processor and one or more electronic sensors. Aspects of neurobiology and neuroscience, for example, may be utilized to provide such reconfigurable event driven hardware, thereby achieving energy-efficient continuous sensing and signature reporting in conjunction with the one or more electronic sensors while the primary processor enters a low power consumption mode. Such hardware is event driven and operates with extremely low energy requirements.

Abstract: A high flux and low pressure drop microfiltration (MF) membrane and a method for making the MF membrane. The microfiltration membranes are formed by a method that includes: preparing a nanofibrous structure; and modifying the surface of the nanofibrous structure with a surface modifier. The nanofibrous structure includes an electrospun nanofibrous scaffold or a polysaccharide nanofiber infused nanoscaffold or mixtures thereof. The electrospun nanofibrous scaffold can include polyacrylonitrile (PAN) or polyethersulfone (PES))/polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or mixtures thereof. The surface modifier includes polyethylenimine (PEI) and polyvinyl amine (Lupamin) cross-linked by ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGdGE)/glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride (GTMACl) or poly(1-(1-vinylimidazolium)ethyl-3-vinylimdazolium dibromide (VEVIMIBr).

Abstract: The invention describes a method for the synthesis of compounds comprising the steps of: (a) compartmentalising two or more sets of primary compounds into microcapsules; such that a proportion of the microcapsules contains two or more compounds; and (b) forming secondary compounds in the microcapsules by chemical reactions between primary compounds from different sets; wherein one or both of steps (a) and (b) is performed under microfluidic control; preferably electronic microfluidic control, The invention further allows for the identification of compounds which bind to a target component of a biochemical system or modulate the activity of the target, and which is co-compartmentalised into the microcapsules.

Abstract: A method for analyzing porosity of a particle and a medium disposed in the porosity of the particle. A video-holographic microscope is provided to analyze interference patterns produced by providing a laser source to output a collimated beam, scattering the collimated beam off a particle and interacting with an unscattered beam to generate the interference pattern for analyzation to determine the refractive index of the particle and a medium disposed in the porosity of the particle to measure porosity and the medium.

Abstract: Described herein are the synthesis and polymerization of a series of N-Boc-protected amino acid vinyl ester (BAAVE) monomers. Homopolymers and heteropolymers containing the monomers are described, particularly heteropolymers with vinyl ester monomers such as vinyl acetate. Deprotection can be used to produce hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers that are particular useful in biological applications such as cellular delivery of biological materials.

Abstract: A method and computer program product for providing a random linear coding approach to distributed data storage is presented. A file is broken into a plurality of pieces. For every peer (peer means storage-location with limited storage space), the number of coded-pieces the peer can store is determined. Each of the coded-piece is determined by taking random linear combination of all the pieces of the entire file. The associate code-vector is stored for every coded-piece. The file is retrieved by collecting code-vectors and the coded-pieces from the peers and viewing the collected code-vectors as a matrix. When a dimension of the matrix is equal to the number of pieces of the file, the file is recovered using the collection of code vectors in the matrix.

Abstract: A multi-core processor provides circuitry for jointly scaling the number of operating cores and the amount of resources per core in order to maximize processing performance in a power-constrained environment. Such scaling is advantageously provided without the need for scaling voltage and frequency. Selection of the number of operating cores and the amount of resources per core is made by examining the degree of instruction and thread level parallelism available for a given application. Accordingly, performance counters (and other characteristics) implemented in by a processor may be sampled on-line (in real time) and/or performance counters for a given application may be profiled and characterized off-line. As a result, improved processing performance may be achieved despite decreases in core operating voltages and increases in technology process variability over time.

Abstract: A cluster of nodes, comprising: a plurality of nodes, each having a security policy, and being associated task processing resources; a registration agent configured to register a node and issue a node certificate to the respective node; a communication network configured to communicate certificates to authorize access to computing resources, in accordance with the respective security policy; and a processor configured to automatically dynamically partition the plurality of nodes into subnets, based on at least a distance function of at least one node characteristic, each subnet designating a communication node for communicating control information and task data with other communication nodes, and to communicate control information between each node within the subnet and the communication node of the other subnets.

Abstract: The inventors have recognized that in RF communication systems, by switching between transmit antennas of an RF transmitter on a sub-symbol basis (antenna index coding), and/or by adaptively determining how often antenna switching occurs (adaptive antenna hopping), an increased amount of data may be wirelessly transmitted to an RF receiver without significantly increasing energy consumption. The inventors have determined that in certain systems, such as ZigBee, data symbols consist of elementary waveform patterns, and that such waveform patterns for transmit antennas may be stored by an RF receiver for later determining transmit antennas for data symbols. The inventors have also determined that the invention may be applied in the frequency domain, such as to OFDM, by storing subcarrier waveform patterns for particular transmit antennas and later determining transmit antennas for subcarriers of data symbols.

Abstract: There is set forth herein a system including a camera device. In one embodiment the system is operative to perform image processing for detection of an event involving a human subject. There is set forth herein in one embodiment, a camera equipped system employed for fall detection.