Structural and electronic properties of CuInSe2

Structural investigation on monocrystalline CuInSe₂ samples has been made. From the single crystal results, the space group of CuInSe₂ was confirmed to be Iˉ42d and the crystal solidification direction was investigated. Compositional uniformity of the ingots was established by EPMA and it was found that the indium concentration was greater than that for copper. Systematic annealing experiments were carried out in vacuum at different temperatures (as low as 160° C) and for different times. Large variation in resistivity was observed after the annealing treatment. P-type samples were found to convert to n-type after the heat-treatments.     

A New Image Analysis Based Method for Measuring Electrospun Nanofiber Diameter

In this paper, a new image analysis based method for electrospun nanofiber diameter measurement has been presented. The method was tested by a simulated image with known characteristics and a real web. Mean (M) and standard deviation (STD) of fiber diameter obtained using this method for the simulated image were 15.02 and 4.80 pixels respectively, compared to the true values of 15.35 and 4.47 pixels. For the real web, applying the method resulted in M and STD of 324 and 50.4 nm which are extremely close to the values of 319 and 42 nm obtained using manual method. The results show that this approach is successful in making fast, accurate automated measurements of electrospun fiber diameters.     

Extending the Kernighan/Lin Heuristic for Hardware and Software Functional Partitioning

The Kernighan/Lin graph partitioning heuristic, also known as min-cut or group migration, has been extended over several decades very successfully for circuit partitioning. Those extensions customized the heuristic and its associated data structure to rapidly compute the minimum-cut metric central to circuit partitioning; as such, those extensions are not directly applicable to other problems. In this paper, we extend the heuristic for functional partitioning, which in turn can solve the much investigated codesign problem of partitioning a system's coarse-grained functions among hardware and software components. The key extension customizes the heuristic and data structure to rapidly compute execution-time and communication metrics, crucial to hardware and software partitioning, and leads to near-linear time-complexity and excellent resulting quality. Another extension uses a new criteria for terminating the heuristic, eliminating time-consuming and unnecessary fine-tuning of a partition. Our experiments demonstrate extremely fast execution times (just a few seconds) with results matched only by the slower simulated annealing heuristic, meaning that the extended Kernighan/Lin heuristic will likely prove hard to beat for hardware and software functional partitioning.     

Mlcrolasers based on silica microspheres

Light can be confined efficiently in the high-Q, small-volume whispering-gallery-modes observed in silica microspheres. By coupling these microspheres to eroded optical fibers and fiber tips, direct mapping of the whispering-gallery modes has been achieved and the mode numbers have been assessed. The properties of these modes have allowed us to obtain laser action with very low thresholds in Nd-doped silica microspheres. Further projects in the field of non-linear optics and cavity quantum electrodynamics are described.     

A complete VARMA modelling methodology based on scalar components

Abstract. This article proposes an extension to scalar component methodology for the identification and estimation of VARMA models. The complete methodology determines the exact positions of all free parameters in any VARMA model with a predetermined embedded scalar component structure. This leads to an exactly identified system of equations that is estimated using full information maximum likelihood.     

Classification and trend analysis of UML books (1997–2009)

Technical books of each subject area denote the level of maturity and knowledge demand in that area. According to the Google Books database, about 208 Unified Modeling Language (UML) books have been published from its inception in 1997 until 2009. While various book reviews are frequently published in various sources (e.g., IEEE Software Bookshelf), there are no studies to classify UML books into meaningful categories. Such a classification can help researchers in the area to identify trends and also reveal the level of activity in each sub-area of UML. The statistical survey reported in this article intends to be a first step in classification and trend analysis of the UML books published from 1997 to 2009. The study also sheds light on the quantity of books published in different focus areas (e.g., UML’s core concepts, patterns, tool support, Object Constraint Language and Model-Driven Architecture) and also on different application domains (e.g., database modeling, web applications, and real-time systems). The trends of book publications in each sub-area of UML are also used to track the level of maturity, to identify possible Hype cycles and also to measure knowledge demand in each area.     

A new intelligent algorithm for dynamic facility layout problem in state of fuzzy constraints

In the present paper, the dynamic facilities layout problem is studied in presence of ambiguity of information flow. Product demand (and consequently material flow) is defined as fuzzy numbers with different membership functions. The problem is modeled in fuzzy programming. Three models of expected value, chance-constrained programming and dependent-chance programming and two hybrid intelligent algorithms are then presented. At the end, efficiency of algorithms for solving fuzzy models of dynamic facilities layout is shown through some numerical examples.     

A statistical framework for few-shot action recognition

Along with the exponential growth of online video creation platforms such as Tik Tok and Instagram, state of the art research involving quick and effective action/gesture recognition remains crucial. This work addresses the challenge of classifying short video clips, using a domain-specific feature design approach, capable of performing significantly well using as little as one training example per action. The method is based on Gunner Farneback’s dense optical flow (GF-OF) estimation strategy, Gaussian mixture models, and information divergence. We first aim to obtain accurate representations of the human movements/actions by clustering the results given by GF-OF using K-means method of vector quantization. We then proceed by representing the result of one instance of each action by a Gaussian mixture model. Furthermore, using Kullback-Leibler divergence (KL-divergence), we attempt to find similarities between the trained actions and the ones in the test videos. Classification is done by matching each test video to the trained action with the highest similarity (a.k.a lowest KL-divergence). We have performed experiments on the KTH and Weizmann Human Action datasets using One-Shot and K-Shot learning approaches, and the results reveal the discriminative nature of our proposed methodology in comparison with state-of-the-art techniques.

     

An H∞non‐fragile observer‐based adaptive sliding mode controller design for uncertain fractional‐order nonlinear systems with time delay and input nonlinearity

In this paper the problem of non‐fragile adaptive sliding mode observer design is addressed for a class of nonlinear fractional‐order time‐delay systems with uncertainties, external disturbance, exogenous noise, and input nonlinearity. An H_∞ observer‐based adaptive sliding mode control considering the non‐fragility of the observer is proposed for this system. The sufficient asymptotic stability conditions are derived in the form of linear matrix inequalities. It is proven that the sliding surface is reachable in finite time. An illustrative example is provided which corroborates the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

Conceptual aspects of geometric quantum computation

Geometric quantum computation is the idea that geometric phases can be used to implement quantum gates, i.e., the basic elements of the Boolean network that forms a quantum computer. Although originally thought to be limited to adiabatic evolution, controlled by slowly changing parameters, this form of quantum computation can as well be realized at high speed by using nonadiabatic schemes. Recent advances in quantum gate technology have allowed for experimental demonstrations of different types of geometric gates in adiabatic and nonadiabatic evolution. Here, we address some conceptual issues that arise in the realizations of geometric gates. We examine the appearance of dynamical phases in quantum evolution and point out that not all dynamical phases need to be compensated for in geometric quantum computation. We delineate the relation between Abelian and non-Abelian geometric gates and find an explicit physical example where the two types of gates coincide. We identify differences and similarities between adiabatic and nonadiabatic realizations of quantum computation based on non-Abelian geometric phases.