Continuous process scale-down and emerging markets for low-power/low-voltage mobile systems call for low-voltage analog integrated circuits. Switched-capacitor (SC) circuits are the building blocks for analog signal processing and will encounter severe overdrive problems when operating at low voltage conditions. There exist three techniques to solve the problem, but with their...
The advance of digital IC technology has been very fast, as shown by rapid development of DSP, digital communication and digital VLSI. Within electronic signal processing, analog-to-digital conversion is a key function, which converts the analog signal into digital form for further processing. Recently, low-voltage and low-power have become also...
The purpose of this study is to examine the lived experiences of women small-scale entrepreneurs in Qingdao, China by placing their collective experiences within relevant social and economic frameworks. This study, conducted in 2011 over a six-month period, applies an ethnographic approach based in modified grounded theory to bring together...
Tensor field topology is of importance to research areas of medicine, science, and engineering. Degenerate curves are one of the crucial topological features that provide valuable insights for tensor field visualization. In this thesis, we study the atomic bifurcations of degenerate curves in 3D linear second-order symmetric tensor fields, and...
We present a method for decentralized, multi-robot exploration in adverse environments where communication is minimal. A key conceptual feature of our method is enabling implicit coordination between robots by training a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) as a heuristic for planning using Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). Our method consists of...
Passive components, including spiral inductors and transformers, fabricated on silicon-based substrates are placing an increasing demand on radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design. Performance of the RFIC suffers from several non-ideal effects that must be taken into account in order to create a successful design. In particular, monolithic transformers can be...
Increasingly congested surface transportation network in urban areas and grow-ing land values make underground transportation systems more attractive for high-ways (i.e., tunnels) and metro system compared to other options [1]. An underground transportation system can preserve the land above for recreational parks, commer-cial buildings, residential homes, or other purposes while...
Various natural language processing (NLP) tasks necessitate deep models that are fast, efficient, and small based on their ultimate application at the edge or elsewhere. While significant investigation has furthered the efficiency and reduced the size of these models, reducing their downstream latency without significant trade-offs remains a difficult task....
Recent research in the UK has found that the wheat cultivar grown in the first year can have a significant impact on the amount of take-all that develops in the second year, regardless of the cultivar planted in year two. ‘Einstein’ is one such cultivar that reduces take-all disease (reduced...
According to conventional wisdom, hops are treated in the brewery as biologically inactive ingredients, added to wort or beer primarily as a flavoring agent. In the past, hops were used in relatively small quantities, with the majority of hop additions made to boiling wort. Converse to traditional hopping practices, modern...