Gain Control

Many people enjoy an Internet connection even at home. These private connections are becoming cheaper, faster and more stable resulting in more and more private PCs being connected at all times. A permanent Internet connection offers new possibilities for Internet services targeting the private home. But it also creates new risks for the household. The Internet is a new door into the house that can be exploited by hackers. They might learn about the behaviour of household members by eavesdropping on their Internet traffic or they can gain control over network nodes and access sensitive information in the house.

The field of English for Academic Purposes has developed rapidly in the past 25 years to become a major force in English language teaching and research. Drawing its strength from broad theoretical foundations and a commitment to research-based language education, EAP has begun to reveal some of the constraints of social contexts on language use and to develop ways for learners to gain control over these. In this first issue of a new journal devoted to developments and understandings in this field, the editors briefly sketch the context within which the journal has emerged and point to some of the issues which currently influence and confront our discipline. In so doing we raise a number of questions which are likely to preoccupy JEAP's readers and contributors into the near future. #

A model for an infrared (IR) flame detection system using multiple artificial neural networks (ANN) is presented. The present work offers significant improvements over our previous design (Huseynov et al., 2005). Feature extraction only in the relevant frequency band using joint time-frequency analysis yields an input to a series of conjugate-gradient (CG) method-based ANNs. Each ANN is trained to distinguish all hydrocarbon flames from a particular type of environmental nuisance and ambient noise. Signal saturation caused by the increased intensity of IR sources at closer distances is resolved by adjustable gain control.

This study examined the linkage between organizational socialization tactics and person-organization (P-O) fit and examined the moderating influence of employees' proactivity behaviors. Results from a sample of 279 employee-supervisor pairs from 7 organizations in South Korea revealed a positive relationship between institutionalized socialization tactics and P-O fit perceptions. However, the association between firms' socialization tactics and P-O fit was facilitated or negated by several proactive behaviors that employees used to gain control over their environment. For example, employees' positive framing harmonized with institutional tactics to create higher P-O fit, whereas employees who proactively developed strong relationships with their supervisors essentially replaced institutionalized socialization tactics.

A multimethod exploration of undergraduates' high-speed Internet use in residence halls took a uses-and-gratifications approach (U & G) and revealed Internet use as integral to students' lives. Students' negative comments about Internet distractions from academic work led to identification of an individual difference variable, internal locus of control of academic effort, as potentially predictive of student variations in use. A random survey (n = 364) revealed positive perceptions of Internet use for academics was weakly but significantly associated with internal locus of control for academic effort. Time spent instant messaging (IM) was negatively correlated with the ability to avoid Internet distractions and concentration on academic work. Strategies are needed to help undergraduates gain control over high-speed Internet use to meet their academic goals. D

A novel envelope detector structure that overcomes the traditional tradeoff required in these circuits, improving both the tracking and keeping of the signal, which is specially advantageous for fast-settling circuits, is proposed in this paper. The method relies on holding the signal by two capacitors in parallel, discharging one when the other is in the hold mode and employing the held signals to form the output. Results show a savings greater than 60% of the capacitor area for the same ripple (< 1%) and a release time constant that is 13 times smaller than that obtained by conventional circuits.

Rolls-Royce plc is currently a powerful competitor in the turbofan engine industry, notwithstanding its own troubled history and the relative lack of international success of British companies in high-technology manufacturing over the past halfcentury. This paper seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of innovative enterprise by analyzing the roles of strategy and finance in sustaining the innovation process at Rolls-Royce over four decades from the mid-1960s. Through an analysis of 'strategic control' and 'financial commitment' as conditions of innovative enterprise at different stages in Rolls-Royce's evolution, we adduce evidence that innovation depends in part on who strategic managers are and how they gain control over financial resources.

We present a discrete-time second-order multibit sigma-delta ADC that filters and decimates by two the input data samples. At the same time it provides gain control function in its input sampling stage. A 4-tap FIR switched capacitor (SC) architecture was chosen for antialiasing filtering. The decimation-by-two function is realized using divided-by-two clock signals in the antialiasing filter. Antialiasing, gain control, and sampling functions are merged in the sampling network using SC techniques. This compact architecture allows operating the preceding blocks at twice the ADC's clock frequency, thus improving the noise performance of the wireless receiver channel and relaxing settling requirements of the analog building blocks. The presented approach has been validated and incorporated in a commercial single-chip Bluetooth radio realized in a 1.5 V 130 nm digital CMOS process. The measured antialiasing filtering shows better than 75 dB suppression at the folding frequency band edge. A 67 dB dynamic range was measured with a sampling frequency of 37.5 MHz.

Recent results from a Swedish program for development of 60-GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) for high-data-rate communication links are presented. Front-end circuits such as mixers, amplifiers, frequency multipliers, IF amplifiers with gain control, and voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) have been realized utilizing GaAs PHEMT and MHEMT technologies. A newly developed 7.5-GHz coupled Colpitt VCO shows a minimum phase noise of 95 dBc at 100 kHz offset. A second-harmonic 14-GHz VCO shows a minimum phase noise of less than 90 dBc at 100 kHz. A novel balanced 7-28-GHz MMIC frequency quadrupler is described and compared with a single-ended quadrupler at the same input frequencies. To demonstrate its feasibility and potential application, the quadrupler is combined with the Colpitt VCO and the output characteristics of the resulting 30-GHz MMIC source are measured. A three-stage MHEMT wide-band amplifier covering 43-64 GHz with a gain of 24 dB, a minimum noise figure of 2.5 dB, and a passband ripple of 2 dB is also described. In future 60-GHz systems for mass markets where cost is of utmost importance, Si-based technologies, especially CMOS, are highly interesting. Some recent circuit results based on a 90-nm CMOS technology are also reported.

In this paper we investigate various properties of equivalence classes of fuzzy equivalence relations over a complete residuated lattice. We give certain characterizations of fuzzy semi-partitions and fuzzy partitions over a complete residuated lattice, as well as over a linearly ordered complete Heyting algebra. In the latter case, for a fuzzy equivalence relation over a linearly ordered complete Heyting algebra, we construct an algorithm for calculation of a minimal family of its equivalence classes which generates it. Most of the presented results are new, but some of them are generalizations of known results given in a way which simplifies and clarifies them.

A transceiver front-end for 5 GHz wireless local area network applications has been designed and implemented in a low-cost 46 GHz f T pure-silicon bipolar technology. The transceiver front-end adopts a superheterodyne sliding-IF architecture and consists of a down-converter, an up-converter and an LO frequency synthesiser. By exploiting a 1 bit variable-gain low-noise amplifier, the down-converter is able to provide an excellent noise figure of 4 dB while ensuring an input 1 dB compression point of 210 dBm with a current consumption of 25 mA from a 3 V supply voltage. The transmitter front-end is implemented by means of a current-reuse variable-gain up-converter. The circuit provides an output 1 dB compression point of 5.3 dBm although consuming only 45 mA from a 3 V supply voltage. Moreover, a linear-in-dB gain control characteristic is achieved over a 35 dB dynamic range. The LO frequency synthesiser is implemented by means of an integer-N phase-locked loop. It features a phase noise of 2117 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from the centre frequency of 4.1 GHz and exhibits a tuning range of 1.2 GHz, from 3.47 to 4.65 GHz. The LO frequency synthesiser draws 20 mA from a 3 V supply voltage.

With the Standish group's CHAOS report proclaiming ICT project success on a mere one-third of projects, project managers have an obligation worldwide to gain control of the situation. Through concrete scope management processes, ICT project managers can learn and embrace proven approaches that measure the size of software projects, streamline the requirements articulation and management, and impose solid change management controls, to keep projects on time and on budget. Scope management is not rocket science, however, with 2/3 of the world's ICT projects deemed as failures, it is apparent that managing scope is not a natural byproduct of project management. Learn approaches and tips used in Europe, Australia, and North America that have dramatically increased the success on ICT projects by trained scope managers.

Front-end circuits such as mixers, amplifiers, frequency multipliers, IF-amplifiers with gain-control, and VCOs are presented. Promising results on VCOs based on a coupled Colpitt VCO topology, designed in both HEMT and HBT technologies, have been achieved. A novel balanced 7 -28 GHz MMIC frequency quadrupler is described and compared with a single ended quadrupler at the same input frequencies. A 3-stage MHEMT wideband amplifier covering 43-64 GHz with a gain of 24 dB, a minimum noise figure of 2.5 dB and ripple of 2 dB is also described. In order to reduce the manufacturing cost for future 60 GHz products, a higher integration level is necessary. Recently, a multifunctional receiver/transmitter utilizing 60 GHz amplifier, frequency converter, and x8 frequency multiplier was demonstrated based on a commercial pHEMT-process.

For many industrial applications in which the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is used, e.g. beer, wine and alcohol production, appropriate flocculation behaviour is certainly one of the most important characteristics of a good production strain. Yeast flocculation is a very complex process that depends on the expression of specific flocculation genes such as FLO1, FLO5, FLO8 and FLO11. The transcriptional activity

2010) Improvement of stability and load sharing in an autonomous microgrid using supplementary droop control loop. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. (Unpublished) ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the problem of appropriate load sharing in an autonomous microgrid. High gain angle droop control ensures proper load sharing, especially under weak system conditions. However it has a negative impact on overall stability. Frequency domain modeling, eigenvalue analysis and time domain simulations are used to demonstrate this conflict. A supplementary loop is proposed around a conventional droop control of each DG converter to stabilize the system while using high angle droop gains. Control loops are based on local power measurement and modulation of the d-axis voltage reference of each converter. Coordinated design of supplementary control loops for each DG is formulated as a parameter optimization problem and solved using an evolutionary technique. The supplementary droop control loop is shown to stabilize the system for a range of operating conditions while ensuring satisfactory load sharing.

Presidential candidates, governors, and members of Congress are advancing proposals to expand health insurance coverage to all Americans-the most important step in improving access to quality health care. This report, prepared for The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, explores the different options and how each may not only increase coverage for the uninsured, but also improve quality and efficiency and gain control over spiraling health care costs. Proposals are grouped into three approaches: tax incentives and the individual insurance market; mixed private-public group insurance with shared responsibility for financing; and public insurance. The Commission believes the most pragmatic approach to coverage for all is mixed private-public group insurance that builds on the best features of our current system with shared responsibility for financing from individuals, employers, and government that minimizes dislocation for the millions of Americans who currently have good coverage.

This paper describes a low-power 22-bit incremental ADC, including an on-chip digital filter and a low-noise/low-drift oscillator, realized in a 0.6-m CMOS process. It incorporates a novel offset-cancellation scheme based on fractal sequences, a novel high-accuracy gain control circuit, and a novel reduced-complexity realization for the on-chip sinc filter. The measured output noise was 0.25 ppm (2.5 V RMS ), the DC offset 2 V, the gain error 2 ppm, and the INL 4 ppm. The chip operates with a single 2.7-5 V supply, and draws only 120 A current during conversion.

A monolithic bipolar variable-gain amplifier with 25-dB maximum differential gain and over 30 dB of gain-control range operating in the DC to 1-GHz frequency range is described. The circuit has a 9.3-dB noise figure from a 50 Ω source, an output third-order intercept of +13.5 dBm at high gain, and an input third-order intercept of +6 dBm at low gain. The gain varies linearly as the gain-control voltage varies from 0 to 1 V and the gain is insensitive to supply and temperature variations for a given gain-control setting. Power consumption is 225 mW from a single 5-V supply

| For obese individuals, successful weight loss and maintenance are notoriously difficult. Traditional drug development fails to exploit knowledge of the psychological factors that crucially influence appetite, concentrating instead on restrictive criteria of intake and weight reduction, allied to a mechanistic view of energy regulation. Drugs are under development that may produce beneficial changes in appetite expression in the obese. These currently include glucagon-like peptide-1 analogs such as liraglutide, an amylin analog davalintide, the 5-HT 2C receptor agonist lorcaserin, the monoamine re-uptake inhibitor tesofensine, and a number of combination therapies such as pramlintide and metreleptin, bupropion and naltrexone, phentermine and topiramate, and bupropion and zonisamide. However, the effects of these treatments on eating behavior remain poorly characterized. Obesity is typically a consequence of overconsumption driven by an individual's natural sensitivity to food stimuli and the pleasure derived from eating. Intuitively, these processes should be effective targets for pharmacotherapy, and behavioral analysis can identify drugs that selectively affect desire to eat, enjoyment of eating, satiation or postmeal satiety. Rational interventions designed specifically to modulate these processes could limit the normally aversive consequences of caloric restriction and maximize an individual's capacity to successfully gain control over their appetite.

An induction motor control system fed by an AC/DC rectifier and a DC/AC inverter group is a nonlinear and EMI generating load causes harmonic distortions and EMI noise effects in power control systems. In this paper, a simulation model is designed for the control circuit and the harmonic effects of the nonlinear load are investigated using FFT analyses. Also, the EMI noise generated by the switching-mode power electronic devices measured using high frequency spectrum scopes. An LISN based active filter is used to damp the harmonic distortions and EMI noises in the simulation environment. Neural network based control system is used to tune the power op-amp gain of series active filter to obtain the voltage value stability at the equipment side as well.

improved the scientific understanding of crack and illicit drug distribution and markets in New York City. Staff developed procedures and outreach methodologies to access and safely conduct research among active sellers, dealers, and low-level distributors of crack, cocaine, and heroin. Nearly 300 subjects were studied on different occasions. The crack distribution business involved specific roles classified into four major groups: low-level distributors, sellers, dealers, and high-level distributors. Role proliferation helped evade police and the most serious penalties, as well as to protect sellers from competitors. The relative effectiveness of police tactics in "gaining control" of the streets in the mid-1990s, had modest impacts on the crack and drug markets. Prices of retail and wholesale units of crack and cocaine remained relatively stable for a dozen years. Inner-city youths born in the 1970s (and reaching young adulthood in the 1990s) had avoided crack smoking and injection of heroin or cocaine. However, having been reared in severely distressed households, their social capital (e.g., their family and social backgrounds plus acquired skills) was very low as they reached adulthood in the 1990s. They had low probabilities of gaining steady legal employment or welfare payments during adulthood.

The field of English for specific purposes (ESP), which addresses the communicative needs and practices of particular professional or occupational groups, has developed rapidly in the past forty years to become a major force in English language teaching and research. ESP draws its strength from an eclectic theoretical foundation and a commitment to research-based language education which seeks to reveal the constraints of social contexts on language use and the ways learners can gain control over these. In this chapter, I will briefly point to some of the major ideas and practices that currently influence ESP, focusing on needs analysis, ethnography, critical approaches, contrastive rhetoric, social constructionism, and discourse analysis. I then go on to look briefly at some of the effects ESP has had on language teaching and research, arguing that it has encouraged teachers to highlight communication rather than language, to adopt a research orientation to their work, to employ collaborative pedagogies, to be aware of discourse variation, and to consider the wider political implications of their role. Together these features of ESP practice emphazise a situated view of literacy and underline the applied nature of the field.

With the Standish group's CHAOS report proclaiming ICT project success on a mere one-third of projects, project managers have an obligation worldwide to gain control of the situation. Through concrete scope management processes, ICT project managers can learn and embrace proven approaches that measure the size of software projects, streamline the requirements articulation and management, and impose solid change management controls, to keep projects on time and on budget. Scope management is not rocket science, however, with 2/3 of the world's ICT projects deemed as failures, it is apparent that managing scope is not a natural byproduct of project management. Learn approaches and tips used in Europe, Australia, and North America that have dramatically increased the success on ICT projects by trained scope managers.

This paper presents a SigmaDelta DAC based transmitter (TX) baseband for 802.11n / 802.16e with channel filtering and gain control performed in the digital domain. The effect of circuit imperfections on TX EVM is analyzed for a robust line-up with gain control and the design of the high speed SigmaDelta modulator is described. The SigmaDelta DAC fabricated in a 90 nm CMOS process operates up to 3.6 GHz while drawing 16 mW from a 1.3 V supply.

Staggered boards, which a majority of public companies now have, provide a powerful antitakeover defense, stronger than is commonly recognized. They provide antitakeover protection both by (i) forcing any hostile bidder, no matter when it emerges, to wait at least one year to gain control of the board, and (ii) requiring such a bidder to win two elections far apart in time rather than a one-time referendum on its offer. Using a new data set that includes all hostile bids in the five-year period 1996-2000, we find that not a single hostile bid came close to winning a ballot box victory against an "effective" staggered board (ESB). We also find that an ESB nearly doubles the odds that the average target in our data set will remain independent, from 34% to 61%, halves the odds that a first bidder will be successful, from 34% to 14%, and reduces the odds that our average target will be forced to sell to a white knight, from 32% to 25%. Furthermore, we find that the shareholders of targets that remain independent in our data set are made substantially worse off compared with accepting the bid, and that ESB's do not provide sufficient countervailing benefits in terms of increased premia to offset the increased costs of remaining independent. Overall, our estimates indicate that, in the period that we study, ESB's reduced the expected returns of the shareholders of hostile bid targets by 8-10%. Finally, we show that most staggered boards were adopted before the developments in takeover doctrine that make ESB's such a potent defense. Our findings call for a reconsideration of the rules governing takeover defenses. In particular, we argue that, at least in the absence of explicit shareholder authorization, managers who lose one election over an outstanding bid should not be allowed to further block the bid with a pill-ESB combination. JEL classification: G30, G34, K22

Color vision is useful for detecting surface boundaries and identifying objects. Are the signals used to perform these two functions processed by common mechanisms, or has the visual system optimized its processing separately for each task? We measured the effect of mean chromaticity and luminance on color discriminability and on color appearance under well-matched stimulus conditions. In the discrimination experiments, a pedestal spot was presented in one interval and a pedestal + test in a second. Observers indicated which interval contained the test. In the appearance experiments, observers matched the appearance of test spots across a change in background. We analyzed the data using a variant of Fechner's proposal, that the rate of apparent stimulus change is proportional to visual sensitivity. We found that saturating visual response functions together with a model of adaptation that included multiplicative gain control and a subtractive term accounted for data from both tasks. This result suggests that effects of the contexts we studied on color appearance and discriminability are controlled by the same underlying mechanism.

Electrophilic aromatic substitution is one of the most important reactions in synthetic organic chemistry. Such reactions are used for the synthesis of important intermediates that can be used as precursors for the production of pharmaceutical, agrochemical and industrial products. However, many commercial processes to produce such materials still rely on technology that was developed many years ago.

This paper presents an adaptive filtering system for separation of two bio-impedance signal components: cardiac and respiratory signals. The proposed filtering system is adaptive to the parameters of the input signal's cardiac component (the reference signal), which is corrupted by the respiratory component and also by additive stochastic disturbances. The adaptation is achieved applying estimation and continuous tracking of the heart rate using a time-optimal Adaptive Phase-Locked Loop (APLL). Technical solutions of the filtering system are oriented on applications in portable and implantable medical devices.

Abstruct-A new adaptive control system for dc motor drive with field weakening is proposed. The adaptation mechanism is based on the gain scheduling. A deep knowledge of the phenomena in the drive was necessary to define the scheduled variables that capture the essential nonlinearities of the process considered. However, in practice, to realize the proposed adaptive control system, the only a priori knowledge required is the experimentally determined magnetization curve. Simulation and experimental results indicating high performances of the control system proposed, are presented.

Multilevel sequences with a spectral null of order M at frequency f, meaning that the power spectral density and its first 2M -1 derivatives vanish at f, are characterized by finite-state transition diagrams whose edge labels satisfy hounds on the variation of the Mth-order running digital sum. Necessary and sufficient conditions for sequences with a spectral null of order M at dc or an arbitrary rational submultiple of the symbol frequency are given. A multilevel code with bounded Mth-order running digital sum is a subset of the set of all sequences generated by a finite state-transition diagram characterizing sequences with a spectral null of order M. Distance properties of this new class of codes on partial-response channels are examined and a lower bound on the minimum Euclidean distance at the output of partial response channels with a spectral null of order P is obtained. It is shown that the distance bound depends on the sum of the orders of code and channel spectral nulls and can be met with equality provided that M + P I 10. The case of M + P > 10 leads to an unsolved problem in number theory. Simple encoders and decoders for selected quaternary codes with a spectral null at dc are given for the dicode channel. The power spectral density of quaternary codes and the maxentropic power spectral density of quaternary sequences with a first-order null are presented.

Presidential candidates, governors, and members of Congress are advancing proposals to expand health insurance coverage to all Americans-the most important step in improving access to quality health care. This report, prepared for The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, explores the different options and how each may not only increase coverage for the uninsured, but also improve quality and efficiency and gain control over spiraling health care costs. Proposals are grouped into three approaches: tax incentives and the individual insurance market; mixed private-public group insurance with shared responsibility for financing; and public insurance. The Commission believes the most pragmatic approach to coverage for all is mixed private-public group insurance that builds on the best features of our current system with shared responsibility for financing from individuals, employers, and government that minimizes dislocation for the millions of Americans who currently have good coverage.

The analog front end of an echo cancellation burst mode (ECBM) transceiver operating from a single 5-V supply is described. The chip performs pulse shaping and line driving in the transmit section and hybrid function, equalization, A/D and D/A conversion, automatic gain control, threshold detection for a phase-locked loop (PLL), and wake-up in the receive section. The partitioning between analog and digital functions is explained. The analog portion of the chip is described for both the receive and transmit portions, and design considerations for the various building blocks are outlined. The chip contains 45 amplifiers of seven different types and three different types of comparators and dissipates about 160 mW in the normal operation mode and 5 mW in the power-down mode. The die area is 50000 mil2 in a 2-μm, double-poly, single-metal CMOS technology

a b s t r a c t A significant percentage of fatal vehicle crashes involve loss of control (LOC). Electronic stability control (ESC) is an active safety system that detects impending LOC and activates counter-measures that help the driver maintain or re-gain control. To assess the effectiveness of ESC in preventing LOC, an empirical study was conducted on a high-fidelity driving simulator. The ESC systems for two vehicles were incorporated into the simulator's dynamics code which was calibrated to ensure engineering validation. The study utilized three scenarios designed to recreate typical LOC situations, and was designed to assess the effects of ESC presence, vehicle type, scenario, age and gender. A total of 120 research participants completed the study. Results showed a statistically significant reduction in LOC with ESC compared to without ESC (F = 52.72, p < 0.0001). The study findings of 5% LOC with ESC and 30% without ESC match several epidemiological studies that have analyzed ESC effectiveness on real-world crashes, providing strong support to the use of driving simulation for studying driver behavior. Study conclusions suggest that wide-spread utilization of ESC is likely to reduce traffic fatalities.

This paper studies the unique nature, institutional roots, and economic consequences of the ruler's political power in Islamic History. An influential interest group in Islamic societies has been the legal community, whose power could range from being able to regulate the rulers to being entirely under their control. The struggle was over the provision of legal goods and services, the legal community gradually gaining control of the law in history and the rulers seeking to appropriate political power by controlling the legal community. The economic consequence of power was the ability to dictate the choice of tax bases and rates.