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Modern electronic devices have been designed to allow many types of human–machine interfaces with flexibility. One of the user-friendly navigations is interfacing a human hand, but the implementation using conventional devices, such as additional controllers or image sensors, requires a larger size or a higher power. In this paper, a small-size and low-power 3D touchless hand navigation sensor (HNS) is presented. The proposed HNS based on a proximity sensor consists of an LED and integrated photosensors. The $x$ - and $y$ -directions can be controlled by tilting a hand in the x-axis and the y-axis without the need of swiping. The distance between the hand and HNS in the z-axis is calculated by the photosensor dedicated to the z-axis. The experimental results show that the proposed HNS is superior to other types of navigation sensors in terms of size and power.

In this study, we sought to describe a novel imaging apparatus that is lightweight, inexpensive, and highly effective for use in colorectal diagnostic and treatment settings. Typical probes for use in colorectal ultrasonic imaging applications are developed for surgeons to diagnose and stage rectal tumors and image the rectum and anus. Here we outline a new technique and use it for colorectal imaging in an animal. This technique involves use of an ultrasound array module positioned along the axis of rotation such that improved rotation is possible. This module is in the shape of a linear rod with a rotary linear component that allows for emission of focused ultrasonic echo signals from a linear section of the probe. The usability of the transducer and rectal image quality are satisfactory in a porcine model with the technique proposed here, axial/lateral resolution as 0.96/2.24 mm with 6 dB applied through the contour map using the point spread function. When compared to currently available methods, this technique provides superior diagnostic 3D volumetric image quality with reduced acquisition time. Given this, the ultrasound device proposed here may prove a viable and preferable method to those currently available for urology and colorectal imaging applications.

Cloud-based video surveillance service is being deployed ubiquitously, and the service normally stores video streams in the cloud over the Internet. The main problem of this service is that the user never knows how secure the video stream is transferred and stored. Although the video contains sensitive data that is related to personal or area-specific information, there is no way to objectively check whether the video is securely managed. Therefore, a user must trust that the service provider will keep their video secure without any evidence. Ensuring confidential information and privacy is protected, the sensitive data should be encrypted and traceable when they are transferred. In this paper, an architecture to build a key management system based on blockchain and public-key cryptography is proposed. The video encryption is possible by a block-cipher algorithm with a given symmetric key. In the proposed system, the symmetric key is also encrypted by a public key and stored as a ledger in the blockchain. Thus, when the symmetric key is requested, every operation is traceable, so a user can trust how a video stream is transferred and stored securely because of the nature of blockchain, decentralization, transparency, and the impossibility of being tempered. In addition, the user can monitor the request flow of the key, and then, the key is selectively distributable by the user’s intention. Therefore, the system meets the requirement of a fully secure method to manage the whole life cycle of video from creation to deletion. In this paper, we propose to apply this architecture to video surveillance service and also extend them to general-purpose systems.

This paper reports a 1280×960 DVS. A 4.95-μm pixel pitch is achieved with in-pixel Cu-Cu connection and the newly designed GIDL-suppression scheme. A sequential column selection scheme and a global event-holding function are implemented to minimize motion artifacts. The power consumption per pixel of 122 nW is 1.25× smaller and the maximum readout speed of 1.3 Geps is 4.33× faster than the previous state-of-the-art.

In the ultrasound display image, users, such as sonographers or doctors, use the zoom function to observe a specific area in more detail. However, the zoom function enlarges the corresponding area image using some simple algorithms, such as linear interpolation. The zoomed image quality is usually quite poor and blurry. Such poor image quality can be improved using deep learning technology. In this study, the applied Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolution Networks (VDSR) [1] prepared with natural images (1,800) and ultrasound images (200) was tested on both an experimental phantom image and a scanned ultrasound image of the liver. The resolution (axial/lateral) of the output and input image was 0.42/1.94 and 1.04/2.52, respectively. In addition, the peak signal-to-noise ratio of output and input images were 35.91/35.70/35.52/34.58(dB) and 32.24/32.86/32.57/31.89(dB), respectively. The contrast of the output image compared to the input one was also excellent. Overall, the output images that were exposed to the applied network were perfect compared to the input images.

The International Energy Agency Technology Collaboration Programme for Ocean Energy Systems (OES) initiated the OES Wave Energy Conversion Modelling Task, which focused on the verification and validation of numerical models for simulating wave energy converters (WECs). The long-term goal is to assess the accuracy of and establish confidence in the use of numerical models used in design as well as power performance assessment of WECs. To establish this confidence, the authors used different existing computational modelling tools to simulate given tasks to identify uncertainties related to simulation methodologies: (i) linear potential flow methods; (ii) weakly nonlinear Froude–Krylov methods; and (iii) fully nonlinear methods (fully nonlinear potential flow and Navier–Stokes models). This article summarizes the code-to-code task and code-to-experiment task that have been performed so far in this project, with a focus on investigating the impact of different levels of nonlinearities in the numerical models. Two different WECs were studied and simulated. The first was a heaving semi-submerged sphere, where free-decay tests and both regular and irregular wave cases were investigated in a code-to-code comparison. The second case was a heaving float corresponding to a physical model tested in a wave tank. We considered radiation, diffraction, and regular wave cases and compared quantities, such as the WEC motion, power output and hydrodynamic loading. The Danish partners acknowledge the support from the Danish Energy Agency through project 374 64017-05197. The Swedish partners were supported by the Swedish Energy Agency under Grants P44423-1 and 375 P44432-1. J.V.R. and G.G. acknowledge the support by Science Foundation Ireland under Grant 13/IA/1886. This research was made possible by support from U.S. the Department of Energy’s EERE Water Power Technologies Office. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. This work was authored (in part) by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledge that the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.

This paper explores Locative Inversion (LI) in English. Following Kim (1998, 2000), we argue that the inverted locative PP is in fact an NP with a null head N. Consequently, we confirm Chomsky’s (1995) suggestion that it is only the nominal feature that enters into a checking relation with the EPP requirement of T. LI involves the special alignment of semantic properties with syntactic positions driven by information structure. It allows the presentation of relatively familiar information before comparatively unfamiliar information. In a minimalist framework, we propose that syntax may manipulate discourse-related features like [+topic] and [+focus] via uninterpretable versions of these on functional heads, Top and Foc. The proposal will be extended to the analysis of the cleft construction involving LI.

Various power supply noise sources in a system integrated circuit degrade the performance of a low dropout (LDO) regulator. In this paper, a capacitor-less low dropout regulator for enhanced power supply rejection is proposed to provide good power supply rejection (PSR) performance. The proposed scheme is implemented by an additional capacitor at a gate node of a pass transistor. Simulation results show that the PSR performance of the proposed LDO regulator depends on the capacitance value at the gate node of the pass transistor, that it can be maximized, and that it outperforms a conventional LDO regulator.

In English, there are many verbs that are transitive by nature but are sometimes used without an object. These have been called object-omission verbs. This paper classifies them into two types: indefinite object-omission verbs (e.g., eat, read, write, etc.) and definite object-omission verbs (e.g., know, shake, understand, etc.). Hankamer and Sag (1976) divide anaphora into two types, depending on the availability of linguistic or situational contexts: deep anaphora and surface anaphora. This paper proposes that the understood objects of object-omission verbs induce two different types of anaphora, corresponding to two types of object-omission verbs: inherent anaphora and contextual anaphora. We further propose that inherent anaphora is lexical, while contextual anaphora is either deep- or surface-anaphoric in the sense of Hankamer and Sag.

The issue of predication enters the syntactic research through the seminal work of Halliday (1967), who draws attention to secondary predicates, which express properties of local subjects. Setting resultative predicates aside, this paper examines the structural height of depictive predicates in relation to VP anaphora such as do ellipsis and do so proverbalization. It is argued that the stranding paradox of depictives results from the adjunction height: subject depictives are adjoined to vP, and object depictives to VP. Given the light verb structure (Chomsky 1995), VP ellipsis elides the VP containing object depictives, thus stranding subject depictives, whereas vP ellipsis elides the vP containing subject depictives.

This paper examines the ATB phenomenon in Gapping and Left-Peripheral Ellipsis. Based on Johnson"s (1994) movement analysis of Gapping, Agbayani and Zoerner (2006) argue for a sideward movement analysis of Gapping and Left-Peripheral Ellipsis. We point out that their analysis is problematic on both conceptual and empirical grounds. Instead, we argue for a multiple dominance analysis, along the line of Citko (2005). In short, we propose that Gapping results from vP coordination and LPE from VP coordination, thus capturing Neijt"s (1979) intuition that Gapping and Left-Peripheral Ellipsis are one and the same phenomena, contrary to Sag (1976).

This paper explores do so as a case of VP anaphora. According to Hankamer and Sag"s (1976) seminal work, do so is classified as a surface anaphor. After examining several tests of anaphora, I first show that do so is on the borderline of Hankamer and Sag"s dichotomy of deep vs. surface anaphora. As a consequence, I propose that shallow anaphora exists between deep and surface anaphora and that do so is such a case. The paper also explores Postal"s (1969) outbound anaphora of do so vs. do it out of anaphoric islands. I argue that outbound anaphora is influenced by the mood, tense, and aspect values associated with the host verb do.

This paper explores the so-called truncated cleft in English. This construction has been classified as a type of copular clauses since Higgins’s (1973) taxonomy of copular clauses. Along the line of Hedberg (2000) and Birner et al. (2007), I observe that truncated clefts are transformationally ambiguous between the copular reading and the cleft reading. I argue that a sufficiently salient open proposition is a crucial factor of disambiguating these two readings. The presence of a salient open proposition engenders the cleft reading of truncated clefts in linguistic contexts, whereas the copular reading is available in situational contexts. Hence, truncated clefts are placed between deep anaphora and surface anaphora in the sense of Hankamer and Sag (1976).

In this paper, we present a demodulation structure suitable for a reader receiver in a passive Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) environment. In a passive RFID configuration, undesirable DC-offset phenomenon may appear in the baseband of the reader receiver. As a result, this DC-offset phenomenon can severely degrade the performance of the extraction of valid information from a received signal in the reader receiver. To mitigate the DC-offset phenomenon, we propose a demodulation structure to reconstruct a corrupted signal with the DC-offset phenomenon, by extracting useful transition information from the corrupted signal. It is shown that the proposed method can successfully detect valid data from a received signal, even when the received baseband signal is distorted with the DC-offset phenomenon.

Multi-modality imaging is beneficial for both preclinical and clinical applications as it enables complementary information from each modality to be obtained in a single procedure. In this paper, we report the design, fabrication, and testing of a novel tri-modal in vivo imaging system to exploit molecular/functional information from fluorescence (FL) and photoacoustic (PA) imaging as well as anatomical information from ultrasound (US) imaging. The same ultrasound transducer was used for both US and PA imaging, bringing the pulsed laser light into a compact probe by fiberoptic bundles. The FL subsystem is independent of the acoustic components but the front end that delivers and collects the light is physically integrated into the same probe. The tri-modal imaging system was implemented to provide each modality image in real time as well as co-registration of the images. The performance of the system was evaluated through phantom and in vivo animal experiments. The results demonstrate that combining the modalities does not significantly compromise the performance of each of the separate US, PA, and FL imaging techniques, while enabling multi-modality registration. The potential applications of this novel approach to multi-modality imaging range from preclinical research to clinical diagnosis, especially in detection/localization and surgical guidance of accessible solid tumors.

A design for tag antenna(diameter of 34 mm) using ceramic material and PIFAs at UHF band, embedded in metallic object is implemented. The antenna can be directly matched to the arbitrary reactance of a tag chip. The proposed tag antenna also has good characteristics of the radiation patterns and the high restraining cross polarization level. It is verified that the proposed tag has good performance by measuring the reading distance over 3m when the tag is just embedded in metallic object.

This paper presents the design of a near-field reader and tag antennas in UHF that can be used for various smart shelves. The tag antenna is designed by introducing an “S”-shaped or “+”-shaped slot to the circular patch and the reader one is a rectangular slot array fed by a microstrip line. These antennas operated in UHF near-field are more reliable in many RFID applications where reading distance is not the major factor. Electric coupling concept between the reader and tag antenna is employed for near-field communication.