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: 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.

Abstract: Both single phase lead-free cubic pyrochlore bismuth zinc niobate (BZN)-based dielectric materials with a chemical composition of Bi1.5Zn(0.5+y)Nb(1.5?x)Ta(x)O(6.5+y), with 0?x<0.23 and 0?y<0.9 and films with these average compositions with Bi2O3 particles in an amorphous matrix and a process of manufacture thereof. The crystalline BZNT-based dielectric material has a relative permittivity of at least 120, a maximum applied electric field of at least 4.0 MV/cm at 10 kHz, a maximum energy storage at 25° C. and 10 kHz of at least 50 J/cm3 and a maximum energy storage at 200° C. and 10 kHz of at least 22 J/cm3. The process is a wet chemical process that produces thin films of Bi1.5Zn(0.5+y)Nb(1.5?x)Ta(x)O(6.5+y) without the use of 2-methoxyethanol and pyridine.

Abstract: Provided is a Schottky diode. The Schottky diode includes: a substrate; a core on the substrate; a metallic layer on the core; and a shell surrounding the core between the metallic layer and the substrate and adjusting a Fermi energy level of the core to form a Schottky junction between the core and the metallic layer.

Abstract: Disclosed are polymerizable mixtures comprising a functionalized ionic gemini surfactant and a thiol-ene crosslinking agent. The polymerizable mixtures that further comprise a polar solvent may be used to form the surfactant into a triply periodic multiply continuous lyotropic phase in the presence of the crosslinking agent. Upon crosslinking, the lyotropic phase morphology is substantially retained.

Abstract: A computer architecture allows for simplified recovery after mis-speculation during speculative execution by controlling speculation to occur within idempotent regions that may be recovered by re-execution of the region without the need for restoring complex state information from checkpoints. A compiler for increasing the size of idempotent regions is also disclosed.

Abstract: The present application provides Brassica INDEHISCENT1 (BIND) sequences.

Abstract: A method of growing carbon nanostructures on a conductive substrate without the need for a vacuum or low-pressure environment provides high electrical field strengths to generate the necessary carbon ions from a feedstock gas and to promote alignment and separation of the resulting structures. In one embodiment, substantially uniform “vertical” nanostructures may be formed around the periphery of an extended wire for use in corona discharge applications or the like. Growth on a planar substrate may provide use with a variety of apparatus requiring a high specific surface conductor such as capacitors, batteries, and solar cells.