Search

Simulated Annealing (SA) is one of the most common FPGA placement techniques, and is used both as a standalone algorithm and to improve an initial analytical placement. While SA-based placers can achieve high-quality results, they suffer from long runtimes. In this paper, we introduce RLPlace a novel SA-based FPGA placer that utilizes both Reinforcement Learning (RL) and targeted perturbations (directed moves). The proposed moves target both wirelength and timing optimization and explore the solution space more efficiently than traditional random moves while preventing oscillation in the Quality of Results (QoR). RL techniques are used to dynamically select the most effective move types as optimization progresses. Experimental results show that RLPlace outperforms the widely-used VTR 8 placer across all run-time/quality trade-off points, achieving better QoR placement solutions in less runtime. On average across the Titan23 suite of large FPGA benchmarks, RLPlace can reduce CPU time by 2.5× with result quality comparable to VTR 8, or improve wirelength by 8% (at a high CPU time budget) to 26% (at a low CPU time budget) vs. VTR 8.0 given the same CPU time.

In this paper, a high-sensitivity low-cost power-aware Support Vector Machine (SVM) training and classification based system, is hardware implemented for a neural seizure detection application. The training accelerator algorithm, adopted in this work, is the sequential minimal optimization (SMO). System blocks are implemented to achieve the best trade-off between sensitivity and the consumption of area and power. The proposed seizure detection system achieves 98.38% sensitivity when tested with the implemented linear kernel classifier. The system is implemented on different platforms: such as Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Xilinx Virtex-7 board and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) using hardware-calibrated UMC 65nm CMOS technology. A power consumption evaluation is performed on both the ASIC and FPGA platforms showing that the ASIC power consumption is lower by at least 65% when compared with the FPGA counterpart. A power-aware system is implemented with FPGAs by the adoption of the Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) technique that allows the dynamic operation of the system based on power level available to the system at the expense of degradation of the system accuracy. The proposed system exploits the advantages of DPR technology in FPGAs to switch between two proposed designs providing a decrease of 64% in power consumption.

As the benefits of Moore's Law diminish, computing performance, and efficiency gains are increasingly achieved through specializing hardware to a domain of computation. However, this limits the hardware's generality and flexibility. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), microchips which can be reprogrammed to implement arbitrary digital circuits, enable the benefits of specialization while remaining flexible. A challenge to using FPGAs is the complex computer-aided design flow required to efficiently map a computation onto an FPGA. Traditionally, these design flows are closed-source and highly specialized to a particular vendor's devices. We propose an alternate data-driven approach, which uses highly adaptable and retargettable open-source tools to target both commercial and research FPGA architectures. While challenges remain, we believe this approach makes the development of novel and commercial FPGA architectures faster and more accessible. Furthermore, it provides a path forward for industry, academia, and the open-source community to collaborate and combine their resources to advance FPGA technology.

Samples from the River Nile, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea were chemically and microbiologically evaluated. The chemical analysis proved that cations and anions concentrations were of higher values in seawater samples in comparison with those of the Nile water. The microbiological analysis showed that Cairo University Nile Bus Station samples (GCB-19) recorded the increased total viable microbial counts (1.6x104 CFU/ml). Total coliforms highest counts were analyzed in GCB-19 samples (110 cells/ml), whereas fecal coliforms highest counts (15 cells/ml) were recorded in Cairo University Nile Bus Station samples (GCB-17) and (GCB-19). PAHs were determined in the collected samples using GC/MS. Seawater samples had increased concentrations of PAHs in comparison with River Nile water ones. Fluorene was the major PAH in all water samples, for it ranged from 25 to 50 ppt. An actinomycetes isolate from the collected samples underwent molecular identification through the pair-wise alignment of its 16S rDNA sequence with sequences in the database. It was indicated that it was identical to Streptomyces macrosporeus with a 98.65% homology sequence. Streptomyces macrosporeus was examined for degradation efficiency of 0.1, 0.05, 0.025, and 0.0125 ppm of PAHs standard mix and 200 ppm of naphthalene, fluorene, and anthracene, individually for 5 days/37 C. It degraded all the detectable concentrations of the chemicals in the PAHs standard mix except for some non-degradable traces of naphthalene. Furthermore, it degraded naphthalene, fluorene and anthracene individually with a percentage of 99.99%, 94.88%, and 96.33%, respectively. Thus, the results of the current study reflected the biodegradation capability of Streptomyces macrosporeus for different PAHs.

A 35 years old man present with a skin lesion on his glans complaining of mild irritation. The condition began 3 years ago, he took wrong medication as he was diagnosed as psoriasis, mostly because the disease in it the beginning is very similar and could trick the dermatologist. He was diagnosed by the biopsy taken,Pseudo-epitheliomatous hyperkeratotic and micaceous balanitis. 5-Flouracil was given in combination with oral Acitretin, Dramatic improvement occurred in both the skin lesion and the symptoms associated.

In this paper, a low power support vector machine (SVM) training, feature extraction, and classification algorithm are hardware implemented in a neural seizure detection application. The training algorithm used is the sequential minimal optimization (SMO) algorithm. The system is implemented on different platforms: such as field programmable gate array (FPGA), Xilinx Virtex-7 and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) using hardware-calibrated UMC 65 nm CMOS technology. The implemented training hardware is introduced as an accelerator intellectual property (IP), especially in the case of large number of training sets, such as neural seizure detection. Feature extraction and classification blocks are implemented to achieve the best trade-off between sensitivity and power consumption. The proposed seizure detection system achieves a sensitivity around 96.77% when tested with the implemented linear kernel classifier. A power consumption evaluation is performed on both the ASIC and FPGA platforms showing that the ASIC power consumption is improved by a factor of 2X when compared with the FPGA counterpart.

In this paper, two different classifiers are software and hardware implemented for neural seizure detection. The two techniques are support vector machine(SVM) and artificial neural networks(ANN). The two techniques are pretrained on software and only the classifiers are hardware implemented and tested. A comparison of the two techniques is performed on the levels of performance, energy consumption and area. The SVM is pretrained using gradient ascent (GA) algorithm, while the neural network is implemented with single hidden layer. It is found that the ANN consumes more power than the SVM by a factor of 4 with almost the same performance. However, the ANN finishes classification in much less number of clock cycles than the SVM by a factor of 34.

In this paper, different window sizes for EEG signal segmentation are investigated in order to optimize the performance of seizure detection systems. To differentiate between epileptic and non-epileptic epochs, the time axis of the EEG signal is divided into non-overlapping windows. The window period should be long enough for the lapse to be informative but not too long for it to stay stationary. Hence, the KPSS test is used to determine signal stationarity for different window sizes, then the optimal window is chosen such that it corresponds to the smallest number of non-stationary segments in the signal of interest. The seizure detection system is then applied to the piece-wise stationary segments. Compared to the exhaustive examination, it is found that the KPSS test optimal window results in the highest sensitivity.

In order to study the long term behavior of concrete structures under the natural exposure to aggressive seawater attack, concrete samples are taken from the wave’s repellent blocks at seashore in the north coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The samples cover a wide range of various exposure times differ from 4 years to more than 60 years. The samples composed from diverse concrete constituents and obtained from different locations along the seashore. The tests (XRF, SEM, EDX, water soluble chloride content using photometer techniques) where conducted on the extracted concretes.

In this paper, both linear and nonlinear features have been reviewed with linear support vector machine (SVM) classifier for neural seizure detection. The work introduced in the paper includes performance measurement through different metrics: accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of multiple linear and nonlinear features with linear support vector machine (SVM). A comparison is performed between the performance of different combinations between 11 linear features and 9 nonlinear features to conclude the best set of features. It is found that some features enhance the detection performance greatly. Using a combination of 3 features of them, a linear SVM classifier detects seizures with sensitivity of 96.78%, specificity of 97.9%, and accuracy of 97.9%.

Copper mobility and availability in soil environments is largely controlled by Cu sorption reactions as well as its chemical forms. In this study, equilibrium, kinetic batch experiments, and a chemical fractionation scheme were carried out to evaluate effects of drinking water treatment residual (DWTR) application on sorption and bioavailability of Cu in three arid zone soils having different properties. Distinct differences in the amounts of Cu sorbed among the different soils were observed where highest sorption was associated with clay, OM, and CEC contents. The quantity of Cu sorbed on the three studied soils drastically increased as a result of increasing rates of DWTR application from 2% to 12% (w/w). Freundlich distribution coefficient (Kf) values indicate that Cu sorption affinities for the studied soils followed the trend Typic torrifluvent (TF) > Typic calciorthids (CO) > Typic torripsamment (TP) soils. The sorption of Cu was initially fast with 95, 92, and 73% of Cu sorbed on TF and CO and TP u...

Coffee is one of the most frequently consumed beverages in Arabic area. It is can be contaminated by Ochratoxin A (OTA)besides presence carcinogenic Millard products as Acrylamide during roasting process . Therefore, the present work carried out to trace the potentiality of presence of OTA and Acrylamide in coffee cup after using different methods of Arabic area methods in Egypt and Saudi Arabi. Forty-two samples of Arabica green coffee(Coffee ArabicaLinn., Rubiaceae), were collected randomly from Saudi Arabia besides same number from Egyptian markets, involved green beans, light and dark roasted beans. All samples were tested for identification of natural contaminated fungal species besides OTA and Acrylamide content before and after coffee cup preparations . The results proved that Egyptian samples were more contaminated than Saudi Arabian samples.Four genes of fungi are present as Fusarium spp,Cladosporum spp, Peniciliium spp,Aspergillus spp. The dominated one was Aspergilus spp which has three varities as A.niger, A. flavus and A. Ochraceus. Also, two toxigenic molds, belonged to two species as Penicillium sp. and Aspergillus sp. which occupied high counts from all tested samples, respectively. OTA-HPLC analysis of coffee beans proved high levels ,especially in dried samples which were naturally contaminated with OTA . The highest levels were present in Egyptian samples as 12.4 ppb(light roasting), 11.9 ppb (dark roasting), then Saudi Arabia which contained 10.2,9.2,8.5 ppb for green, light and dark roasting respectively. OTA doses were present than the recommended dose ( 5.0 ppb). Turkish method (Egyptian method) , decreased OTA from 12.4 ppb (dried) to 9.1ppb(for light roasting ) while the dark roasted coffee were less (8.6ppb).Same trend was clear for Saudi Arabia samples which recorded 8.1,7.1 and 6.5 ppb for coffee cup by the Saudi Arabian methods using natural spices as cardamom ,saffron and ginger. Gulf method was the best method for reducing OTA content to 6.4,4.8 and 3.4 ppb after process to less safe recommended dose. That is due to high level of antioxidants from spices which boiled for short time not long time as Saudi Arabia methods. GC-MS analysis of Acrylamide proved natural presence in roasted coffee beans in dry samples due to high temperature during roasting. Its content raised than recommended safety levels (0.5-0.8 ppm/weight/daily ).Its were observed in dark roasted tested samples ,whereas in light roasted was less values. OTA concentrations were in Egyptian light roasted samples were contained 49.9 ppm, and dark roasted 53.4ppm respectively..Same results were obtained with Sadui Arabian dark roasted after preparing coffee cup with both of two methods a observed in dry samples (94.6ppm) but decreased little bitte to 70 ppm (Sadui methods ) and 58.6 ppm (Gulf Area methods).But ,the best results were obtained with coffee green beans and light roasted. Whereas ,the lowest and healthy coffee cup resulted from light or green beans with Gulf Arabian methods which contained the lowest acrylamide content less than 50 ppm. Besides the Turkish or Saudi Arabian methods with same light roasted samples. Finally, it could be recommended that using source of antioxidant source in preparation coffee cup decreased the natural toxicity roles as OTA and Acrylamide content.

Objective: We compared the results of holmium laser and pneumatic intracorporeal lithotripsy for large ureteric calculi in terms of efficacy, safety and complications. Methods: The study was conducted between April 2009 and October 2010. 80 patients divided into two equally matched groups were included in a prospective randomized trial including patients with a ureteric stone size of 0.5–2 cm. A holmium laser with a 550-µm fiber was employed in the laser lithotripsy (LL) group. The Swiss Lithoclast was used in the pneumatic lithotripsy (PL) group. Results: Mean stone size was comparable in both groups, namely 13.1 mm in the PL group and 12.9 mm in the LL group. The early stone-free rate was equal in both groups, while the delayed stone-free rate was 95% in LL and 85% in PL. Stone migration occurred in 12 PL cases and in 5 LL cases. Ureteric perforation occurred in 3 LL cases and in 2 PL cases. Ureteric stricture occurred in 1 case following LL. Conclusion: Both PL and LL are effective and safe modalities in treating large ureteric stones with minor insignificant differences. A pneumatic system may be more efficient with regard to the cost-benefit ratio, which was not studied in the present work; further studies should address this issue.

The management of renal calculi following previous open surgery represents a challenge for urologists. The aim of this study is to evaluate the outcomes and safety of ureteroscopic laser retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) for renal calculi following prior open renal surgery. The charts of 53 patients who underwent RIRS for renal calculi following prior open surgery for urolithiasis were reviewed. Both flexible and semi-rigid ureteroscopes were utilized together with holmium: YAG laser for stone disintegration. Intravenous urography, computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound were used to evaluate the patient, perioperatively. Stone size ranged from 5 to 32 mm (mean 14.3 mm). The mean operative time was 86 min (20-130). The overall stone-free rate was 92.4%. The overall stone-free rates after one and two-procedures were 79.2% (42 cases) and 92.4% (49 cases), respectively. Four patients (7.5%) had larger residual fragments, 2 (3.8%) of them underwent SWL, and 2 (3.8%) cases were followed up conservatively. Major complications were reported in two patients (3.8%). Stone analysis revealed calcium oxalate in 39 patients, uric acid in 5, calcium phosphate in 4, struvite in 3, and cystine in 2 cases. Ureteroscopic retrograde intrarenal surgery for renal calculi following prior open renal surgery was a minimally invasive, safe procedure with a high success rate. It is a viable alternative for PNL in managing recurrent renal calculi efficiently.

Background and objective Risks are anticipated for laryngeal mask airway (LMA) anaesthesia during nasal and sinus surgeries because blood can trickle posteriorly into the hypopharynx and contaminate the airway. This study was conducted to determine whether a LMA could provide adequate airway protection from the expected intraoperative bleeding. Methods After obtaining ethics committee approval, 60 children ASA status I or II, 1-12 years of age, and scheduled for nasal and sinus surgery were randomized to one of two groups, endotracheal tube (ETT) or LMA, with 30 patients in each. Topical lidocaine with adrenaline was used in all patients, and throat packs were used for the ETT group. The airway was examined using a fibreoptic endoscope in order to determine whether blood or tissue debris soiled the supraglottic airway or trachea. After extubation, LMAs and ETTs were examined for soiling by blood and graded on a scale of 0-3. For ETT, the grades were 0, none; 1, contamination above the mark for vocal cord depth; 2, contamination below the mark for vocal cord depth; and 3, contamination interiorly. For LMA, they were 0, no staining; 1, staining on the anterior aspect of the cuff of the LMA; 2, staining inside the cup of the LMA; and 3, staining found in the tube. Results Blood stains were found in the larynx of one child in the LMA group. In the ETT group, there were three cases of staining (two supraglottic and one in the trachea, P = 0.161). With the LMA, 12 (40%) and 18 (60%) patients had visual contamination scores of 0 and 1, respectively. With the ETT, 14 (46.7%), 10 (33.3%), and six (20%) patients had visual contamination scores of 0, 1, and 2, respectively (P = 0.0123). Conclusion LMA is a suitable method for paediatric patients undergoing sinonasal surgery because it offers airway protection from blood contamination comparable to that of a standard uncuffed ETT with throat pack.

Objective To evaluate the safety and efficacy of percutaneous suprapubic stone extraction (PSPSE) for pediatric posterior urethral stones. Methods Between July 2007 and June 2010, 54 boys presenting with acute urinary retention due to posterior urethral stones underwent PSPSE. Patients were a mean age of 66.4 months (range, 8-180 months). The stone size was 0.7-1.9 cm. Patients were placed under general anesthesia, and a 7F urethroscope was used to pushback the stone to the bladder. A 3-mm suprapubic puncture with a scalpel was performed, followed by insertion of a straight narrow hemostat through the puncture aided with cystoscopic guidance. The stone was grasped with the hemostat in its narrowest diameter and was extracted percutaneously or crushed if friable. The suprapubic puncture was closed with a single 4-0 Vicryl (Ethicon) suture. Results Intact stone retrieval was achieved in 45 patients, and the stone was crushed into minute fragments in 9 patients. Intraperitoneal extravasation developed in 1 patient that required open surgical intervention. Mean operative time was 22 minutes. Patients were monitored for up to 17 months, with complete resolution of symptoms and stone clearance. Conclusion PSPSE provides a minimally invasive approach for the extraction of urethral and bladder stones in the pediatric population. The use of a straight hemostat for suprapubic stone extraction or crushing is a good alternative to suprapubic tract dilation, with minimal morbidity.

Background: Tri-modality bladder sparing therapy in selected bladder cancer patients may be an alternatives treatment option to immediate radical cystectomy as it may result in satisfactory Quality Of Life (QOL). The present study evaluated the effects of this conservative approach versus surgical approach, i.e. Radical Cystectomy (RC) and orthotopic neobladder, on QOL of patients. Patients and methods: This is a prospective study of patients with bladder cancer in group I (using tri-modality bladder sparing therapy) and group II (using RC and orthotopic neobladder). Patients in both groups were subjected to interview NCCN-FACT FBlSI18 questionnaire, inquiring about physical and emotional disease related symptoms, treatment side effects and function and well being. SPSS version18 software was used for statistical analysis. Results: Internal consistency of the 18 items in both groups was assessed by Cronbach’s α which was adequate at 0.89 at Group I and 0.84 at Group II. Univariate analysis showed that there were statistically significant difference (p

A conduction dominated thermal blooming phenomenon of a powerful laser beam propagating in an unguided channel (humid atmosphere) is rigorosly investigated based on ray optics and taking into account the coupling between the beam and the medium along the propagation path. Transport coefficients are humidity- and temperature-dependent. We have derived the continuum value of refractivity N and the absorption coefficient σ of humid air under the form1.