Computer Clothing:Digital clothes that able to perform some of the PC functions

There is a major movement going on in the electronics and computer industries to develop wearable devices for what’s being called Post-PC era. We are now at the dawn of that era and some of these devices are already making their way to the consumer market .Computerized clothes will be the next step in making computers and devices portable without having to strap electronics into our body. These digital clothes will able to perform some of the PC functions. These devices are small in size and portable. This apparel can be used to read our heart rate and breathing. The LED monitors could even be integrated into this apparel to display text and images.

Coordinated secondary voltage control to eliminate voltage violation in power system contingencies

In order to achieve more efficient voltage regulation in a power system, coordinated secondary voltage control has been proposed, bringing in the extra benefit of enhancement of power system voltage stability margin. The study is presented by the e.g. with two SVCs and two STATCOMs in order to eliminate voltage violation in systems contingencies. In the paper, it is proposed that the secondary voltage control is implemented by a learning fuzzy logic controller. A key parameter of the controller is trained by P-type learning algorithm via offline simulation with the assistance of injection of artificial loads in controller’s adjacent locations. A multiagent collaboration protocol, which is graphically represented as a finite state machine, is proposed in the paper for the coordination among multiple SVCs and STATCOMs. As an agent, each SVC or STATCOM can provide multilocation coverage to eliminate voltage violation at its adjacent nodes in the power system. Agents can provide collaborative support to each other which is coordinated according to the proposed collaboration protocol.

Cylinder Deactivation: A fast emerging technology to save fuel

With alternatives to the petrol engine being announced ever so often you could be forgiven for thinking that the old favorite the petrol engine is on its last legs but nothing could be further from the truth and possibilities for developing the petrol engines are endless. One of the most crucial jobs on the agenda is to find ways of reducing fuel consumption, cutting emissions of the green house gas CO2 and also the toxic emissions which threaten air quality. One such fast emerging technology is cylinder deactivation where a number of cylinders are shut down when less is needed to save fuel.
The simple fact is that when you only need small amounts of power such as crawling around town what you really need is a smaller engine. To put it another way an engine performs most efficiently when its working harder so ask it to do the work of an engine half its size and efficiency suffers. Pumping or throttling losses are mostly to blame. Cylinder deactivation is one of the technologies that improve fuel economy, the objective of which is to reduce engine pumping losses under certain vehicle operating conditions.

When a petrol engine is working with the throttle wide open pumping losses are minimal. But at part throttle the engine wastes energy trying to breathe through a restricted airway and the bigger engine, the bigger the problem. Deactivating half the cylinders at part load is much like temporarily fitting a smaller engine.
During World War II, enterprising car owners disconnected a spark plug wire or two in hopes of stretching their precious gasoline ration. Unfortunately, it didn’t improve gas mileage. Nevertheless, Cadillac resurrected the concept out of desperation during the second energy crisis. The “modulated displacement 6.0L V-8- 6-4” introduced in 1981 disabled two, then four cylinders during part-throttle operation to improve the gas mileage of every model in Cadillac’s lineup. A digital dash display reported not only range, average mpg, and instantaneous mpg, but also how many cylinders were operating. Customers enjoyed the mileage boost but not the
side effects. Many of them ordered dealers to cure their Cadillacs of the shakes and stumbles even if that meant disconnecting the modulated-displacement system


Like wide ties, short skirts and $2-per-gallon gas, snoozing cylinders are back. General Motors, the first to show renewed interest in the idea, calls it Displacement on Demand (DoD). DaimlerChrysler, the first manufacturer to hit the U.S. market with a modern cylinder shut-down system calls its approach Multi- Displacement System (MDS). And Honda, who beat everyone to the punch by equipping Japanese-market Inspire models with cylinder deactivation last year, calls the approach Variable Cylinder Management (VCM)
The motivation is the same as before — improved gas mileage. Disabling cylinders finally makes sense because of the strides achieved in electronic power train controls. According to GM, computing power has been increased 50-fold in the past two decades and the memory available for control algorithms is 100 times greater. This time around, manufacturers expect to disable unnecessary cylinders so seamlessly that the driver never knows what’s happening under the hood.

CHEMICAL ROCKET ENGINES

Chemical rocket engines, like those on the space shuttle, work by burning two gases to create heat, which causes the gases to expand and exit the engine through a nozzle. In so doing they create the thrust that lifts the shuttle into orbit. Smaller chemical engines are used to change orbits or to keep satellites in a particular orbit. For getting to very distant parts of the solar system chemical engines have the drawback in that it takes an enormous amount of fuel to deliver the payload. Consider the Saturn V rocket that put men on the moon: 5,000,000 pounds of its total take off weight of 6,000,000 pounds was fuel. The problem is that all the energy for chemical engines comes from the energy stored in the propellants.
Electric rocket engines use batteries, solar power, or some other energy source to accelerate and expel charged particles. These rocket engines have extremely high specific impulses, so they are very efficient, but they produce low thrusts. The thrusts that they produce are sufficient only to accelerate small objects, changing the object’s speed by a small amount in the vacuum of space. However, given enough time, these low thrusts can gradually accelerate objects to high speeds. This makes electric propulsion suitable only for travel in space. Because electric rockets are so efficient and produce small thrusts, however, they use very little fuel. Some electric rockets can provide thrust for years, making them ideal for deep-space missions. Satellites or other spacecraft that use electric rockets for propulsion must be first boosted into space by more powerful chemical rockets or launched from a spacecraft.

CARBON NANOTUBES

Carbon Nanotubes -- tiny tubes about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair -- consist of rolled up sheets of carbon hexagons.
HISTORY
Discovered in 1991 by researchers at NEC, they have the potential for use as minuscule wires or in ultrasmall electronic devices.
To build those devices, scientists must be able to manipulate the Nanotubes in a controlled way.
DEVELOPMENT

IBM researchers using an atomic force microscope (AFM), an instrument whose tip can apply accurately measured forces to atoms and molecules, have recently devised a means of changing a nanotube's position, shape and orientation, as well as cutting it.

Continuously variable transmission (CVT):A potential solution to this fuel economy dilemma

After more than a century of research and development, the internal combustion (IC) engine is nearing both perfection and obsolescence: engineers continue to explore the outer limits of IC efficiency and performance, but advancements in fuel economy and emissions have effectively stalled. While many IC vehicles meet Low Emissions Vehicle standards, these will give way to new, stricter government regulations in the very near future. With limited room for improvement, automobile manufacturers have begun full-scale development of alternative power vehicles. Still, manufacturers are loath to scrap a century of development and billions or possibly even trillions of dollars in IC infrastructure, especially for technologies with no history of commercial success. Thus, the ideal interim solution is to further optimize the overall efficiency of IC vehicles.
One potential solution to this fuel economy dilemma is the continuously variable transmission (CVT), an old idea that has only recently become a bastion of hope to automakers. CVTs could potentially allow IC vehicles to meet the first wave of new fuel regulations while development of hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicles continues. Rather than selecting one of four or five gears, a CVT constantly changes its gear ratio to optimize engine efficiency with a perfectly smooth torque-speed curve. This improves both gas mileage and acceleration compared to traditional transmissions.
The fundamental theory behind CVTs has undeniable potential, but lax fuel regulations and booming sales in recent years have given manufacturers a sense of complacency: if consumers are buying millions of cars with conventional transmissions, why spend billions to develop and manufacture CVTs?
Although CVTs have been used in automobiles for decades, limited torque capabilities and questionable reliability have inhibited their growth. Today, however, ongoing CVT research has led to ever-more robust transmissions, and thus ever-more-diverse automotive applications. As CVT development continues, manufacturing costs will be further reduced and performance will continue to increase, which will in turn increase the demand for further development. This cycle of improvement will ultimately give CVTs a solid foundation in the world’s automotive infrastructure.

CRYOGENIC ENGINES :CRYOGENICS- BIRTH OF AN ERA

Cryogenics originated from two Greek words “kyros” which means cold or freezing and “genes” which means born or produced. Cryogenics is the study of very low temperatures or the production of the same. Liquefied gases like liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen are used in many cryogenic applications. Liquid nitrogen is the most commonly used element in cryogenics and is legally purchasable around the world. Liquid helium is also commonly used and allows for the lowest temperatures to be reached. These gases can be stored on large tanks called Dewar tanks, named after James Dewar, who first liquefied hydrogen, or in giant tanks used for commercial applications.

The field of cryogenics advanced when during world war two, when metals were frozen to low temperatures showed more wear resistance. In 1966, a company was formed, called CyroTech, which experimented with the possibility of using cryogenic tempering instead of Heat Treating, for increasing the life of metal tools. The theory was based on the existing theory of heat treating, which was lowering the temperatures to room temperatures from high temperatures and supposing that further descent would allow more strength for further strength increase. Unfortunately for the newly-born industry the results were unstable as the components sometimes experienced thermal shock when cooled too fast. Luckily with the use of applied research and the with the arrival of the modern computer this field has improved significantly, creating more stable results.
Another use of cryogenics is cryogenic fuels. Cryogenic fuels, mainly oxygen and nitrogen have been used as rocket fuels. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to flight-test the indigenously developed cryogenic engine by early 2006, after the engine passed a 1000 second endurance test in 2003. It will form the final stage of the GSLV for putting it into orbit 36,000 km from earth.
It is also used for making highly sensitive sensors for detecting even the weakest signals reaching us from the stars. Most of these sensors must be cooled well below the room temperature to have the necessary sensitivity, for example, infrared sensors, x-ray spectrometers etc. The High resolution Airborne Widebandwidth Camera, for SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Field Astronomy) which is a Boeing 747 flying observatory, a project of the University Of Chicago, Goddard Space Flight Center and the Rochester Institute Of Technology, which when enters into operation will be the largest infra-red telescope available, is cooled by an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator operating at a temperature of 0.2K.
Another branch of cryogenics is cryonics, a field devoted to freeze people, which is used to freeze those who die of diseases, that they hope will be curable by the time scientists know how to revive people.

COMMON SYNTHETIC PLASTICS

INRODUCTION
Plastic molecules are made of long chains of repeating units called monomers. The atoms that make up a plastic’s monomers and the arrangement of the monomers within the molecule both determine many of the plastic’s properties. Plastics are one of the classification of polymers .If a polymer is shaped into hard and tough utility articles by the application of heat and pressure ,it is used as “plastic”.

Synthetic polymers are often referred to as "plastics", such as the well-known polyethylene and nylon. However, most of them can be classified in at least three main categories: thermoplastics, thermosets and elastomers.

Man-made polymers are used in a bewildering array of applications: food packaging, films, fibers, tubing, pipes, etc. The personal care industry also uses polymers to aid in texture of products, binding etc.

Examples
A non-exhaustive list of these ubiquitous materials includes:
acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)
polyamide (PA)
polybutadiene
poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT)
polycarbonate
poly(ether sulphone) (PES, PES/PEES)
polyethylene (PE)
poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)
poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)
polyimide
polypropylene (PP )
polystyrene (PS)
styrene acrylonitrile (SAN)
polyurethane (PU)
polyvinylchloride (PVC)

CAMLESS ENGINE

The cam has been an integral part of the IC engine from its invention. The cam controls the “breathing channels” of the IC engines, that is, the valves through which the fuel air mixture (in SI engines) or air (in CI engines) is supplied and exhaust driven out. Besieged by demands for better fuel economy, more power, and less pollution, motor engineers around the world are pursuing a radical “camless” design that promises to deliver the internal – combustion engine’s biggest efficiency improvement in years. The aim of all this effort is liberation from a constraint that has handcuffed performance since the birth of the internal-combustion engine more than a century ago. Camless engine technology is soon to be a reality for commercial vehicles. In the camless valve train, the valve motion is controlled directly by a valve actuator – there’s no camshaft or connecting mechanisms .Precise electro hydraulic camless valve train controls the valve operations, opening, closing etc. The seminar looks at the working of the electro hydraulic camless engine, its general features and benefits over conventional engines. The engines powering today’s vehicles, whether they burn gasoline or diesel fuel, rely on a system of valves to admit fuel and air to the cylinders and let exhaust gases escape after combustion. Rotating steel camshafts with precision-machined egg-shaped lobes, or cams, are the hard-tooled “brains” of the system. They push open the valves at the proper time and guide their closure, typically through an arrangement of pushrods, rocker arms, and other hardware. Stiff springs return the valves to their closed position. In an overhead-camshaft engine, a chain or belt driven by the crankshaft turns one or two camshafts located atop the cylinder head.
A single overhead camshaft (SOHC) design uses one camshaft to move rockers that open both inlet and exhaust valves. The double overhead camshaft (DOHC), or twin-cam, setup does away with the rockers and devotes one camshaft to the inlet valves and the other to the exhaust valves

CTs and PTs

With the increasing demand for electric power, the economics of power transmission requires the use of high transmission line voltages. This leads to escalation of cost for conventional CTs and PTs.

This paper provides an economical alternative, for the use of CTs and PTs for the measurement of current and voltage. The method is an optical method using lasers. The method employs two types of devices; free path and enclosed path devices. The basic principle of the optical method is based upon magneto-optic effect, electro optic effect and the electro gyration effect.

This paper concludes with the suggestion for future development. Instead of using free path, the enclosed path method is suggested.d88eafd484ee4ecf974e07836d1f6d30

Cryptography is the art of devising codes and ciphers

Cryptography is the art of devising codes and ciphers, and cryptoanalysis is the art of breaking them. Cryptology is the combination of the two. In the literature of cryptology, information to be encrypted is known as plaintext, and the parameters of the encryption function that transforms are collectively called a key.
Cryptology took on many forms in the centuries between the fall of Rome and the dawn of the Industrial Age. By the late 19th century, with the advent of the telegraph and wireless radio, cryptology took its permanent place as an important component of commercial, military and diplomatic communications. Rudimentary mechanical and electromechanical encoding inventions developed at the turn of the 20th century and through World War I laid the foundation for stronger and more efficient cipher devices.
With the dawn of the computer age, the possibilities for encryption methods and devices expanded exponentially. Machines with blazing fast computing power gave cryptographers the ability for the first time to design complicated encryption techniques.
The next great evolution in cryptology came with the introduction of microprocessor-powered computers. The rapid deployment of increasingly powerful desktops quickened the pace of cryptographic development, since even a moderately skilled computer user could break many of the algorithms in use.
Cryptology is more deeply rooted in every part of our communication and computing world than when it was first employed by ancient peoples. We use it to protect everything from e-mail to e-commerce transactions to personal diaries. As our dependency upon technology increases, so too will our dependency upon cryptography. After all, we all have things we want to keep secret.

Contactless Energy Transfer System (CETS)

Most mains operated equipment in use today is connected to the supply via plugs and sockets. These are generally acceptable in benign environments but can be unsafe or have limited life in the presence of moisture. In explosive atmospheres and in undersea applications special connectors must be used. This paper describes a technique, the Contactless Energy Transfer System (CETS), by which electrical energy maybe transmitted, without electrical connections or physical contact, through non-magnetic media of low conductivity. CETS, which has been used to transfer upto 5KWs across a 10mm gap, employs high frequency magnetic coupling and enables plug in power connections to be made in wet or hazardous environmental conditions without the risk of electric shock, short-circuiting or sparking. Energy may be transmitted without the necessity for accurately manufactured “plug and socket” mechanisms and may be transmitted from source to load even when there is a relative motion. Load source voltage matching may be made inherent to the system.

Condition monitoring of transformer: Electrical Seminar Topic

Transformers are a large part of the component structure of the electricity system. Knowing the condition is essential to meeting the goals of maximizing return on investment and lowering total cost associated with transformer operation.

In order to reconcile both decreasing maintenance spending and reliable service, condition based maintenance (CBM) is often proposed. The successful application of CBM lies in obtaining information transformers, so that, on the one hand, a critical condition will be noted early enough to take measures and on the other hand, so that only minimal maintenance is being applied to transformers still in good condition.

The paper covers the following areas.
• General aspects of aging in transformers.
• An overview of condition monitoring methodology with partial discharge patterns in focus.
• Partial discharge measurement and diagnostics on power transformer using a multi channel digital PD detector.

Cryptography

Security of information results from the need for Private transmission of messages. It is very essential that Security coverage should be provided to the computer systems, including to security to communication channels

Cryptography means hidden writing. Cryptography is used to protect information to which illegal access is possible and where other protective measures are inefficient

The basic idea in cryptography is to take a message in ordinary language, called plain text. This is transformed in some way to produce cipher text. The cipher text can now be sent to the correspondent. He uses another transformation to recover the plain text from the cipher text. The plain text is encrypted or hidden by the first transformation to obtain the cipher text. The cipher text is decrypted by another transformation to obtain the plain text once again. After encryption, cipher text can be transmitted over a data link or stored in a file

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Cryptography

Security of information results from the need for Private transmission of messages. It is very essential that Security coverage should be provided to the computer systems, including to security to communication channels

Cryptography means hidden writing. Cryptography is used to protect information to which illegal access is possible and where other protective measures are inefficient

The basic idea in cryptography is to take a message in ordinary language, called plain text. This is transformed in some way to produce cipher text. The cipher text can now be sent to the correspondent. He uses another transformation to recover the plain text from the cipher text. The plain text is encrypted or hidden by the first transformation to obtain the cipher text. The cipher text is decrypted by another transformation to obtain the plain text once again. After encryption, cipher text can be transmitted over a data link or stored in a file

Carbon nanotubes

“Carbon nanotubes can in principle play the same role as silicon as in electronic circuits”.

Although the electronics industry is already pushing the critical dimensions of transistors in commercial chips be-low 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter)- 400 atoms wide-engineers face large obstacles in continuing the miniaturization.

Within this decade, the materials and processes on which the computer revolution has been built will begin to hit fundamental physical limits.

Two major problems have so far thwarted attempts to shrink metal wires further.

1. There is as yet no good way to remove the heat produced by the devices, so packing them in more tightly will only lead to rapid overheating.

2. As metal wires get smaller, the gust of electrons moving through them becomes strong enough to bump the metal atoms around, and before long the wires fail like blown fuses

CLUSTERING TECHNOLOGY

The world of commerce relies on highly available information systems to run and manage core business operations such as data warehousing, online transaction processing, and decision support system solutions. Likewise, the worlds of science and engineering also rely on high-performance computing to provide solutions and solve problems,. No matter how fast or available today’s computers are, tomorrow’s applications will invariably demand more. A stage has been reached where stand-alone computers can no longer provide the required levels of availability and reliability. Today’s challenge involves not just providing high availability and optimal performance, but doing so flexibly and inexpensively. Clustering Technology should prove to be a possible solution to address a broad range of system availability and performance requirements.

A Cluster is a parallel or distributed system consisting of independent computers that cooperate as a single system. Generally speaking, clusters offer a way to utilize computer resources more productively in comparison to when the same number of machines in working standalone – the total result is greater than the sum of the separate parts. Clustering Technology aims at providing continuous high availability of resources despite processor and communication failures.