Design and Implementation of Traceability Management System for Pigs Based on Personal Digital Assistant

The traceability management system for pigs based on personal digital assistant （PDA） was constructed by software engineering method to provide the traceability management for pork safety. This traceability system included information managements for pig breeding and pig quaran- tine inspection supervision. It also realized the record and supervision of pig information, feed usage, veterinary drug usage and quarantine inspec- tion. We mainly introduced the designs of systemic structure and functional structure of the traceability system and key techniques of system imple- mentation.

Professional caregivers’ perceptions on the prerequisites for and consequences of people with mild dementia using a digital photo diary

Research is currently ongoing to investigate the use of assistive technology by people with mild dementia to support independent living at home. The aim of this study was to describe professional caregivers’ perceptions on the prerequisites for and consequences of people with mild dementia using a digital photo diary to facilitate their talks about daily events with their family members. A questionnaire was sent out to 582 participants (response rate 70.1%) to elucidate the professional caregivers’ perceptions on the use of the digital photo diary. The questionnaire contained both quantitative and qualitative data and was analyzed with descriptive statistics, factor analysis, multivariate analysis of covariance and qualitative content analysis. This study reports the results related to prerequisites and consequences of using the photo diary. The results from the factor analysis revealed four factors: Trust, Vulnerability, Dependency/Independency and Control. The qualitative content analysis resulted in five categories: Immediate implementation after receiving a diagnose is required, Relatives’ participation is a necessity, Strengthened self-esteem and meaningful everyday life, Increased alienation and a feeling of isolation and Assistive digital devices provide opportunities. The theme was interpreted as: Personalization and the preservation of dignity. The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that the participants had an overall positive view of the usage of this specific digital photo diary for people suffering from dementia, but rigorous considerations needs before implementation of the device and regularly follow ups if dignity is to be maintained for people with dementia.

Empirical study of transpedicular screw placement assisted by digital navigation templates in the thoracic spines

Objective To investigate the accuracy and feasibility of transpedicular screw placement assisted by the navigation templates in cadaveric thoracic spines.Methods Twenty thoracic cadavers specimens were randomly divided into two

A Mobile GIS Application to Heavily Resource-Constrained Devices

GIS applications to mobile devices are becoming i nc reasingly popular, utilizing a di-verserange of devices. Many of these devices suffer from serious constraints in three main areas: processor speed, memory space and screen size. This paper presents a GIS application, called "MacaoMap", that is intended for heavily resource-co nstrained handheld devices. MacaoMap is a tourism-oriented map application of t he Macao territory for PalmOS and Pocket PC personal digital assistants. It was designed to perform satisfactorily on devices with as little as 16 MHz processor speed, and requires only 500 KB available memory for the GIS application and al l GIS data. Memory requirements are kept low through a specially designed data f ormat. The main challenge of satisfactory map drawing speed is addressed through a variety of techniques that were developed for this application. The paper des cribes the application’s data format, outlines the map drawing techniques, and points out the areas for future development.

Detection and Location of Objects from Mobile Mapping System Integrated with CCD Cameras

During the last decade, spatio-temporal databases have become increasingly important in many applications such as geographic information systems （GIS） and engineering information systems. This paper discusses the design and implementation of a geocomputing platform for the development of location-based services （LBS） focusing on mobile mapping. During the analysis, design, and implementation of the geocomputing platform, an effective method is proposed for the real-time processing of geographic information acquired by a camera attached to a personal digital assistant （PDA）. This method combines location information given by the global position system （GPS） with man＇s ability to recognize the location of objects and their geographical relationship to improve object mapping.

A programmable gain amplifier with digitally assisted DC offset calibration for a direct-conversion WLAN receiver

This paper presents a programmable gain amplifier（PGA） circuit with a digitally assisted DC offset cancellation（DCOC） scheme for a direct conversion WLAN receiver.Implemented in a standard 0.13-μm CMOS process,the PGA occupies 0.39 mm2 die area and dissipates 6.5 mW power from a 1.2 V power supply.By using a single loop single digital-to-analog converter（DAC） mixed signal DC offset cancellation topology,the minimum DCOC settling time achieved is as short as 1.6μs with the PGA gain ranging from -8 to 54 dB in a 2 dB step.The DCOC loop utilizes a segmented DAC structure to lower the design complexity without sacrificing accuracy and a digital control algorithm to dynamically set the DCOC loop to fast or normal response mode,making the PGA circuit in compliance with the targeted WLAN specifications.

A 4th-order reconfigurable analog baseband filter for software-defined radio applications

This paper presents a 4th-order reconfigurable analog baseband filter for software-defined radios.The design exploits an active-RC low pass filter（LPF） structure with digital assistant,which is flexible for tunability of filter characteristics,such as cut-off frequency,selectivity,type,noise,gain and power.A novel reconfigurable operational amplifier is proposed to realize the optimization of noise and scalability of power dissipation.The chip was fabricated in an SMIC 0.13μm CMOS process.The main filter and frequency calibration circuit occupy 1.8×0.8 mm;and 0.48×0.25 mm;areas,respectively.The measurement results indicate that the filter provides Butterworth and Chebyshev responses with a wide frequency tuning range from 280 kHz to 15 MHz and a gain range from 0 to 18 dB.An IIP3 of 29 dBm is achieved under a 1.2 V power supply.The input inferred noise density varies from 41 to 133 nV/（Hz）;according to a given standard,and the power consumptions are 5.46 mW for low band（from 280 kHz to 3 MHz） and 8.74 mW for high band（from 3 to 15 MHz） mode.