Portable and Highly Versatile Impedance Meter for Very Low Frequency Measurements

Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is a characterization technique that is gaining more and more importance in various fields of research and applications. The frequency range of investigation varies according to the type of application. In some fields (biology, medicine, energy) it is useful to be able to perform measurements at very low frequency values (down to a few mHz or even below). While impedance meters operating at frequencies in the range from a few tens of Hz up to a few MHz can be regarded as quite standard pieces of instrumentation commonly available in many laboratories, instrumentation for measurements at very low frequencies, although commercially available, is less common. The subject of this work is the design, realization and testing of a low frequency impedance measurement platform that has the advantage of being portable, rather inexpensive, and yet highly versatile. In our approach, we exploit a personal computer and a soundboard as a powerful system for digital signal generation and analysis that, with the help of low complexity and low-cost external hardware and a public domain software for the implementation of the core system, allow to tailor the platform for targeting specific applications with minimal effort. As an example, we will demonstrate the application of the system to the investigation of polypyrrole-based supercapacitor structures.

An Interface Extension for the New EPANET 2.X

The EPANET 2.0 is a public domain software used to model water distribution networks. The last main release dates to 2000. Recently, the Open Source EPANET Initiative has fixed some bugs and has brought new features to the EPANET solver, such as improved convergence or pressure-driven simulation, and has released it under a new version: EPANET 2.2. Although the legacy Graphical User Interface (GUI) still works with the updated Dynamic Link Library (DLL) (backward compatibility), it does not access the new features. This paper proposes and explores a GUI extension that takes advantage of the new pressure-driven features (such as pressure deficit or demand deficit). The paper also discusses some implementation aspects of the new solver that should be revisited in future releases.

PLIDflow: an open-source workflow for the online analysis of protein–ligand docking using galaxy

Motivation Molecular docking is aimed at predicting the conformation of small-molecule (ligands) within an identified binding site (BS) in a target protein (receptor). Protein–ligand docking plays an important role in modern drug discovery and biochemistry for protein engineering. However, efficient docking analysis of proteins requires prior knowledge of the BS, which is not always known. The process which covers BS identification and protein–ligand docking usually requires the combination of different programs, which require several input parameters. This is furtherly aggravated when factoring in computational demands, such as CPU-time. Therefore, these types of simulation experiments can become a complex process for researchers without a background in computer sciences. Results To overcome these problems, we have designed an automatic computational workflow (WF) to process protein–ligand complexes, which runs from the identification of the possible BSs positions to the prediction of the experimental binding modes and affinities of the ligand. This open-access WF runs under the Galaxy platform that integrates public domain software. The results of the proposed method are in close agreement with state-of-the-art docking software. Availability and implementation Software is available at: https://pistacho.ac.uma.es/galaxy-bitlab. Contact [email protected] Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Choroidal Vascularity Index: An In-Depth Analysis of This Novel Optical Coherence Tomography Parameter

Remarkable improvements in optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology have resulted in highly sophisticated, noninvasive machines allowing detailed and advanced morphological evaluation of all retinal and choroidal layers. Postproduction semiautomated imaging analysis with dedicated public-domain software allows precise quantitative analysis of binarized OCT images. In this regard, the choroidal vascularity index (CVI) is emerging as a new imaging tool for the measurement and analysis of the choroidal vascular system by quantifying both luminal and stromal choroidal components. Numerous reports have been published so far regarding CVI and its potential applications in healthy eyes as well as in the evaluation and management of several chorioretinal diseases. Current literature suggests that CVI has a lesser variability and is influenced by fewer physiologic factors as compared to choroidal thickness. It can be considered a relatively stable parameter for evaluating the changes in the choroidal vasculature. In this review, the principles and the applications of this advanced imaging modality for studying and understanding the contributing role of choroid in retinal and optic nerve diseases are discussed. Potential advances that may allow the widespread adoption of this tool in the routine clinical practice are also presented.

Utilization of Digital Orthopantomography to Assess Mandibular Asymmetries

This study used a public domain software, ImageJ, to analyze the orthopantomography in order to diagnose mandibular asymmetry. Analyze was performed on 36 panoramic x-rays from two types of patients: one with normal occlusion, and the other with unilateral crossbite. The x-rays were performed in the same center, by the same operator. Image J analyze was based on linear and angular measurements taken from 9 anatomic points marked on the digital images. Conclusions of study have revealed that crossbite patients presented asymmetries in mandibular corpus and in position of the condyles. Keywords: Mandibular asymmetry, Orthopantomography, Image J, crossbite

Heterogeneous Defect Prediction Based on Transfer Learning to Handle Extreme Imbalance

Software systems are now ubiquitous and are used every day for automation purposes in personal and enterprise applications; they are also essential to many safety-critical and mission-critical systems, e.g., air traffic control systems, autonomous cars, and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. With the availability of massive storage capabilities, high speed Internet, and the advent of Internet of Things devices, modern software systems are growing in both size and complexity. Maintaining a high quality of such complex systems while manually keeping the error rate at a minimum is a challenge. This paper proposed a heterogeneous defect prediction method considering class extreme imbalance problem in real software datasets. In the first stage, Sampling with the Majority method (SWIM) based on Mahalanobis Distance is used to balance the dataset to reduce the influence of minority samples in defect data. Due to the negative impact of uncorrelated features on the classification algorithm, the second stage uses ensemble learning and joint similarity measurement to select the most relevant and representative features between the source project and the target project. The third phase realizes the transfer learning from the source project to the target project in the Grassmann manifold space. Our experiments, conducted using nine projects of three public domain software defect libraries and compared with four existing advanced methods to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is more accurate in terms of Area under curve (AUC).

Generating Cipher Text using BLOWFISH Algorithm for Secured Data Communications

Cryptography plays a major role in the network security. In order to secure the data one must do encryption of the original message. In this paper, the design and analysis of high speed and high performance BLOWFISH algorithm is implemented in VHDL coding and compared with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm. The BLOWFISH algorithm involves the process of giving the data and key as input to the encryption block. BLOWFISH encryption algorithm is designed and programmed in VHDL coding. Then it is implemented in Xilinx 10.1. This research is carried in the following steps: designing of encryption algorithm, writing VHDL code, simulating the code on “ModelSim altera 6.5e”, synthesizing and implementing the code using Xilinx’s ISE 10.1.This research aims in developing flexible and technology independent architectures in the areas of VPN software, file compression, public domain software such as smart cards, etc. Also presents the comparison of BLOWFISH and AES algorithms. Experimental results show that BLOWFISH algorithm runs faster than AES algorithm while both of them consume almost the same Power.

Framework for Rigorous Analysis of Moisture-Related Structural Damage in Flexible Pavements

The infiltration of water from precipitation through the hot mix asphalt layers in flexible pavements can lead to significant decrease in the moduli of the underlying layers, especially the base layer. As a result, the weakened pavement structure can suffer more damage and deteriorate faster compared with the same pavement under its normal condition. The objective of this study is to develop a framework that can lead to public-domain software that highway agencies can use on a regular basis to conduct a rigorous analysis of the moisture-related structural damage in flexible pavements. A framework of a numerical analysis that integrates the unsaturated hydraulic analysis with finite element structural performance has been developed using two open-source software packages. The framework has been applied to different pavement structures with different drainage systems. Analyses show a significantly longer period of time when the base layer experiences high degrees of saturation in a pavement with poor drainage compared with that for a pavement with proper drainage. Consequently, it is demonstrated that the pavements weakened because of moisture infiltration suffer a significantly higher amount of damage for a longer period of time under traffic, and thus experience shorter service lives. The proposed framework can be potentially used to evaluate and improve the resilience of pavement networks against extreme events that cause heavy precipitation, as well as to evaluate the impact of drainage structures and conditions on life during structural analysis and design of pavements.

QLSA: A Software Library for Spectral Estimation in Low-Frequency Noise Measurement Applications

A public domain software library is introduced and discussed that aims at enabling the development of customized real-time spectral analysis applications in the field of Low-Frequency Noise Measurements. Besides allowing spectral and cross-spectral estimation on multiple channels, the library effortlessly enables the implementation of quasi-logarithmic frequency resolution for real-time spectral analysis over several decades of frequency. By exploiting the library, the burden of the selection of the proper spectral estimation parameters in any given application is virtually eliminated.