Abstract
Tinting is a critical issue in communication systems, especially for synchronous communications. These show a high dependence on the clock signal purity due to errors that can be introduced into the decision process. This paper addresses the design, on a 130nm CMOS process, of a Radiation Tolerant Voltage Controlled Quartz Crystal Oscillator (VCXO), including techniques to reduce the influence of radiation and noise on its performance. The VCXO is included on a PLL designed to work within High Energy Physics (IIEP) experiments.

Abstract

Abstract
There is a growing need to develop new tools to help end users in tasks related to the design, monitoring, maintenance and commissioning of industrial processes. The complexity of the industrial environment requires that these tools have flexible features in order to provide valuable data at the early planning and design phases. Furthermore, it is known that industrial processes have stringent requirements for dependability (reliability and availability), since failures can cause economic losses, environmental damages and danger to people. The lack of tools that enable the evaluation of faults in industrial processes could mitigate these problems. In this work we present a framework which is able to estimate the reliability and availability of industrial processes that can be modeled as a graph. The framework transforms the graph structure into a Fault Tree model in order to analyze their dependability. In order to validate the proposal we conduct a dependability study of an industrial process. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract
Digital public displays can have a key role in urban ubiquitous computing infrastructures, but they have not yet managed to fill this role. A key step in that direction would be the emergence of an application model for open display networks that would enable anyone to create applications for display infrastructures. In this work, we study the development of web-based applications for public displays. We report on our experience of application development for real world public deployment and also on an experiment with external web developers to assess their ability to create such applications using our own development tools. The results show that the web-based app model can effectively be used in the context of public displays and that web developers are able to leverage upon their expertise to create this type of applications. © Springer International Publishing 2013.

Abstract
The sophistication of a string measures how much structural information it contains. We introduce naive sophistication, a variant of sophistication based on randomness deficiency. Naive sophistication measures the minimum number of bits needed to specify a set in which the string is a typical element. Thanks to Vereshchagin and Vitányi, we know that sophistication and naive sophistication are equivalent up to low order terms. We use this to relate sophistication to lossy compression, and to derive an alternative formulation for busy beaver computational depth. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract
Background: Surgical repair of pectus excavatum (PE) has become more popular due to improvements in the minimally invasive Nuss procedure. The pre-surgical assessment of PE patients requires Computerized Tomography (CT), as the malformation characteristics vary from patient to patient. Objective: This work aims to characterize soft tissue thickness (STT) external to the ribs among PE patients. It also presents a comparative analysis between the anterior chest wall surface before and after surgical correction. Methods: Through surrounding tissue segmentation in CT data, STT values were calculated at different lines along the thoracic wall, with a reference point in the intersection of coronal and median planes. The comparative analysis between the two 3D anterior chest surfaces sets a surgical correction influence area (SCIA) and a volume of interest (VOI) based on image processing algorithms, 3D surface algorithms, and registration methods. Results: There are always variations between left and right side STTs (2.54 +/- 2.05 mm and 2.95 +/- 2.97 mm for female and male patients, respectively). STTs are dependent on age, sex, and body mass index of each patient. On female patients, breast tissue induces additional errors in bar manual conception. The distances starting at the deformity's largest depression point at the SCIA are similar in all directions. Some diverging measures and outliers were found, being difficult to find similar characteristics between them, especially in asymmetric patients. Conclusion: The Nuss procedure metal bar must be modeled according to each patient's special characteristics. The studied relationships between STT and chest surface could represent a step forward to eliminate the CT scan from PE pre-surgical evaluation.