IEEE Central Texas SectionTHE ANALOG |
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Volume 56-09 |
September 2012 |
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Newsletter of the Central Texas Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. Archives of The Analog can be found on the CTS web site here.Published monthly. Deadline for inclusion is the 26th day of the previous month. Send submissions, comments, questions to John Purvis, Editor, john.purvis@ieee.org CONTENTSGeneral Interest Local Chapter ActivitiesConferences, Events and Other MeetingsLocal IEEE Conferences, Events and WorkshopsNon-IEEE Meetings and Events of interest suggested by the membership Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Events and Information Career Tips, Tools and Gadgets IEEE EXTERNAL LINKS
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General InterestChairman's ColumnThe
summer vacation season has come to a close, the students are back in
school and CTS Chapter meetings are back in full swing. September is
filled with interesting meetings from many of the chapters, check out
the list below and plan to attend. A few weeks ago I attended the 1st
meeting of our newest chapter, CEDA (Council on Electronic Design
Automation). It was a review of DAC 2012 and was attended by about 50
members. You will be hearing a lot about DAC in the coming months,
because the 50th DAC will be in Austin in June of 2013. For more
information go to https://www.DAC.com.
Elections for the 2013 chapter officers should be held by November and the results reported to the Section Secretary, Zhuo Li, zhuoli@ieee.org, by December. If a chapter does not plan to have a meeting in November then the election should be held before then. CTS Chapter officers terms of office start January 1 and go to December 31. For more details please refer to the IEEE MGA Operations Manual, section 9.0, paragraph F. https://www.ieee.org/documents/section09_30june2012.pdf. Kenny Rice Back to TOP Membership Development
Annual IEEE Election –
VOTE…VOTE….VOTE!
Annual Election Process Has
Begun: Look for your annual election ballot package to arrive in August
or by early September. All members eligible to vote will receive a
paper ballot and a postage-paid reply envelope via first-class mail.
Included is information about how to vote electronically. VOTE NOW AT https://www.ieee.org/election.
Not an IEEE MemberJoin IEEE today and get 16 months
of membership for the price of 12. That’s right signup today and
renewals will be deferred till the end of 2013. Checkout the
updated benefits of being an IEEE member at https://www.ieee.org/membership
Did You Know -
The IEEE has created an IEEE eLearning Library, the premier online collection of short courses and conference workshops. Login with your IEEE login and view many recorded webinars and training tutorials. Login as a guest and see public content. Check it out at https://www.ieee.org/elearning Joe
Redfield Back to TOP News
of Interest to the Section
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Topic/Title |
The Voltage Level Shifter: Ubiquitous Circuit Component
Often Misunderstood and Ignored |
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Speaker | Dr. Sanchez Hector, Freescale |
Date/Time | Sep. 20, 2012 / 6:00pm-7:30pm |
Cost | |
Location | Roundup conference room,
Freescale (Building B), 7700 Parmer Ln, Austin, TX 78729 |
Notes |
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Topic/title |
Bjarne Stroustrup Presents - C++11 Style – A Touch of
Class |
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Speaker |
Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original
implementer of C++ and the author of several books (incl. "Programming
-- Principles and Practice using C++" and "The C++ Programming
Language") and many popular and academic publications. His research
interests include distributed systems, design, programming techniques,
software development tools, and programming languages. He is actively
involved in the ISO standardization of C++. Dr. Stroustrup is a
Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University and the holder of
the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science. He is a member of
the US National Academy of Engineering, an IEEE Fellow, and an ACM
fellow. Born in Aarhus Denmark. Cand.Scient. (Mathematics and Computer
Science), University of Aarhus Denmark. Ph.D. (Computer Science)
Cambridge University, England. https://www.stroustrup.com |
Abstract |
We know how to write bad code: Litter our programs with
casts, macros, pointers, naked new and deletes, and complicated control
structures. Alternatively (or in addition), obscure every design
decision in a mess of deeply nested abstractions using the latest
object-oriented programming and generic programming tricks. For good
measure, complicate our algorithms with interesting special cases. Such
code is incomprehensible, unmaintainable, usually inefficient, and not
uncommon. But how do we write good code? What principles, techniques, and idioms can we exploit to make it easier to produce quality code? I will make an argument for type-rich interfaces, compact data structures, integrated resource management and error handling, and highly-structured algorithmic code. I will illustrate my ideas and motivate my guidelines with a few idiomatic code examples. I will use C++11 freely. Examples include auto, general constant expressions, uniform initialization, type aliases, type safe threading, and user-defined literals. C++ features are only just starting to appear in production compilers, so some of my suggestions have the nature of conjecture. However, developing a “modern style” is essential if we don’t want to maintain newly-written 1970s and 1980s style code in 2020. This presentation reflects my thoughts on what “Modern C++” should mean in the 2010s: a language for programming based on light-weight abstraction with a direct and efficient mapping to hardware, suitable for infrastructure code. |
Date/time |
Wednesday, September 19th at 6:30 PM 6:30 p.m. Networking and Gathering 7:00 p.m. Call to Order, Announcement 7:15 p.m. Presentation, with Q/A 8:45 p.m. Meeting Evaluation, Adjourn |
Location |
NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS BUILDING C Cafe 1 and Cafe 2 11500 North Mopac Austin, TX 78759 |
Cost |
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Reservations |
https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/13647 |
Notes |
Follow the Austin chapter on Twitter @AustinIEEECS, and please feel to tweet with our tag for relevant content to our community. We've officially launched the LinkedIn group for our the
Austin chapter of the IEEE Computer Society. Feel free to sign up
at the following URL: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4064900. |
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Topic/Title |
The Central Texas Future Cities Competition |
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Speaker | Joules Webb – STEM Education Specialist Joules is a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Connect-the-Dotter. She is an Education Leader with a passion and expertise gained through over twenty years of experience serving in both education and industry. In education, she has served as a Texas HS science teacher and campus instructional technologist, a science teacher instructional coach, and currently as a STEM Educational Specialist with Transformation 2013 Texas STEM (T-STEM) Center. She is also a doctoral student in the Integrative STEM Education program at Virginia Tech. |
Abstract | This program will give an overview of the IEEE Future
Cities Competition. The Central Texas Section is the primary sponsor of the Central Texas Future Cities Competition planned for Saturday, January 19, 2013 at Texas State university in San Marcos, TX. The Future City Competition is an integrated, multidisciplinary, holistic approach to relevant issues and is a strong example of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) education that addresses national and state academic content standards. The program asks 6th, 7th and 8th grade students from our local area to team with engineer-volunteer mentors to create — first on computer and then in large, three-dimensional models — their visions of the city of tomorrow. Students work as a team with an educator and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity™ 4 Deluxe software; research and write solutions to an engineering problem; build tabletop scale models with recycled materials; and present their ideas before judges at Regional Competitions in January. Regional winners represent their region at the National Finals in Washington, DC in February. If you are an area engineer who is looking for a worthwhile way of contributing to our nation’s future scientific minds, please consider joining the Future City Competition team of mentors and judges for the 2012-2013 school year! |
Date/Time | Tuesday, September 18, 2012; Dinner 6:30, Networking
7:15, Program 7:30 |
Location | Conference Room B, University Center, St. Mary’s
University, San Antonio, TX |
Cost |
Dinner will be in the St. Mary’s Cafeteria downstairs in
the University Center. They have an all you can eat buffet for
$7.50 plus tax. Each person will pay for his or her own
meal. We will have a block of tables so we can sit together –
look for Small IEEE Computer Society Signs. |
Reservations |
Not Required but for head count please email Dr. Djaffer Ibaroudene, dibaroudende@stmarytx.edu , or call (210) 431-2050 https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/13941 |
Notes | See website for directions and parking, https://www.ieee-cs-cts.org |
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Topic/Title | Automating the Modeling of the Scalability of Computing
Systems Performance Using Industry Standard (SPEC) Benchmarks |
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Speaker | Dr. Ted Lehr |
Speaker Bio | Dr. Ted Lehr is a Senior Software Engineer at CA
Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience analyzing,
modeling, supporting, and managing computer performance. He has
seven patents and has over 20 published technical articles. He
received his Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie
Mellon University. |
Abstract |
Although not a Big Data problem, the large amount of
performance data on the many computing platforms that are engineered
and deployed every month present problems in being able to objectively
assess how the performance of these systems really
compare. This presentation will discuss techniques to
acquire and process industry standard benchmarks (SPEC) using
algorithms for product models that predict how the performance of those
systems scale under changing workloads. |
Date | Wednesday, September 26, 2012 Networking at 6:00 pm; Business and Program from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm |
Location | PoK-e-Jo’s, 2121 W. Parmer Lane at Lamplight
Village, Austin TX 78727 |
Cost | $5.00 minimum charge for the restaurant.
Supper is at optional extra cost. |
Reservations | Not required. All interested parties are invited
to attend. For more information, go to: https://ewh.ieee.org/r5/central_texas/cn/ |
Notes |
Do a friend a favor. Bring your colleagues to grow the Consultants Network.
More information on Consultants Networks: https://www.ieeeusa.org/business/whatis.asp
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Sponsoring the Solar Technology Workshop, September
16. See IEEE Meetings section for
details. |
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Topic/Title | The Interaction of Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields and Biology |
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Speaker | Dr. Bennett Ibey. Dr. Bennett Ibey is current director of cellular and molecular research activities for AFRL/RHDR at the Tri-Service Research Laboratory located at Fort Sam Houston. He is at the forefront of research on the cellular effects of pulsed electromagnetic fields. His doctorate research at Texas A&M involved application of biomedical optics for glucose measurement. |
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Date/Time | Sept 20, 2012, at 6:00 pm |
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None |
Reservations | RSVP can be made to brett.moore@ieee.org. |
Location |
KCI Building 5 |
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The Engineering Management Society has become the Technology Management Council. Information about meetings can be found in the sections for Technology Management Council - Austin and Technology Management Council - San Antonio
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More information on GOLD: https://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/gold/index.html
GOLD Launches Mentoring
Connection Webinar
Are you interested in becoming a mentor
or finding a mentor to help with your professional
development?
If the
answer is yes, check out a free new IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade
(GOLD) webinar aimed at
helping mentors and mentees connect with each other. Learn more at https://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/17953/32170
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Topic/Title |
Designing Instrumentation for Regulated Industry: Case
Study – bioPotential Module |
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Speaker |
Dr. Nachiket M. Kharalkar, National Instruments Nachiket got his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Government College of Engineering Pune in June, 2001. He entered graduate school at The University of Texas at Austin in August 2001. He received the degrees of Master of Science & Doctorate of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer engineering (Major: Biomedical engineering) from The University of Texas at Austin. As a part of his master’s thesis he developed a novel test for the measurement of endothelial dysfunction, which helps in the early prediction of heart attack (IP licensed to: Endothelix Inc.). His doctoral research was focused on the assessment of vulnerable plaque using thermal properties. Nachiket did his summer internship at Reliant Technologies in California, where he designed and developed prototypes of the laser instruments for skin resurfacing. He worked for Plexon Inc. (located in Dallas - Texas) from 2008-2011. At Plexon he developed hardware and user interface software for 16-channel neural stimulator. He has been working for National Instruments as a Systems Engineer, since October 2011. At UT Austin along with the academic activities, Nachiket served on various university committees as a graduate student representative. He served on the search committee for Senior Associate Vice President & Dean of Students and Associate Vice President for Human Resources. He was on executive committee of the Graduate Student Assembly during 2004-2005 academic year. In Spring 2006, he was inducted into the Friar’s Society. |
Abstract |
In this seminar we will analyze the world of making
medical devices. We will look at how to turn current medical device
design challenges into opportunities, to differentiate your device from
the competition. In the second part we will look at some of the key
technologies that can help us tackle these challenges. In the end I
will present a case study showcasing the design of a custom mezzanine
card (or daughter card) for the National Instruments single-board RIO
platform (NI-9606). A bioPotential medical device is my use case which
includes challenges in designing for regulated markets. |
Date/Time |
September 17, 2012 - Reception 6-6:15pm, Presentation
6:15-7:30pm |
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https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/13859
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National Instruments Building C 1S13 |
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No meeting scheduled at this time.
For more information, contact Ray Chen
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Topic/Title | Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell" - an IEEE Milestone |
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Speaker | Dr. Richard Wiggins After receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Harvard, Dr Wiggins joined the MITRE Corporation, where he worked in the development and implementation of speech coding technology for narrowband voice communication. Dr Wiggins received several patents for the new speech coders such as the Piecewise Linear Predictive Coder (PLPC) which took advantage of spectral folding of under- sampled band-passed signals to reduced computational complexity. A major goal of the digital speech coding algorithm development was real-time implementation using high speed programmable processors. These processors took advantage of parallelism, pipelining, and used dedicated multipliers and adders to achieve double precision accumulation of inner products, a basic operation in many digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms. Dr Wiggins joined the Central Research Laboratories at TI in 1976 and one of his first projects was to investigate and propose techniques for the speech synthesizer for the Speak & Spell, a learning aid for spelling. His work resulted in an integrated circuit (IC) for speech generation using LPC synthesis. This work resulted in the highly successful product line of speaking learning aids for Texas Instruments and numerous other products using speech synthesis. Dr Wiggins received key patents for his work on speech synthesis and he was one of three TI’ers awarded the 1993 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Technical Field Award in consumer electronics “For Pioneering contributions to consumer electronics products employing synthetic speech for education and entertainment.” |
Abstract | When TI introduced the Speak & Spell in 1978, the
product was featured on the cover of Business Week Magazine. The
impact of the product was greatly enhanced by the high quality voice of
the product that was enabled by the development of a single chip speech
synthesizer. This chip used a fairly recently developed digital
signal processing (DSP) algorithm that was not widely known or
used. While the product was hailed as opening a new market
for talking products, it was also recognized as a demonstration of the
power and flexibility of DSP systems. This talk addresses three aspects of Speak & Spell. 1: Events surrounding the product development and the basic speech synthesis technology implemented in the integrated circuit. 2: The impact that this product had on accelerating the adaption of the now wide-spread use of DSP techniques in a variety of everyday devices. 3: Lessons the development of the Speak & Spell provides concerning technical innovation. |
Date/Time | September 20, 2012 11:30 to 1:00 PM |
Location | Lion & Rose British Restaurant & Pub, 842 NW
Loop 410 (Park North Shopping Center) San Antonio, TX |
Cost |
We will order from the regular menu, and the restaurant
will provide separate checks. |
Reservations | So that we may have an accurate headcount, RSVP to Tom
O'Brien, Life Members (SA) Chair, 210.481.3443 or t.p.obrien@ieee.org |
Notes |
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Topic/Title | Vulnerability of the Power Grid |
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Speaker | Dr. Ross Baldick, University of Texas at Austin,
Austin, TX Dr. Baldick is a Professor and Leland Barclay Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He is an IEEE Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer. His current research involves optimization and economic theory as applied to electric power systems. |
Abstract | In this presentation, Dr. Baldick will provide
background on the U.S. electric power system, congestion, security and
vulnerabilities. He will show the importance of analyzing
vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks and describe our modeling
approach. He will demonstrate how to perform this analysis with our
tools, briefly describing some recent extensions. |
Date/Time | Tuesday, September 25, 2012 6:00 to 6:30 PM Social 6:30 to 7:00 PM Dinner 7:00 to 7:30 PM Business Meeting 7:30 to 8:30 PM Program 9:00 PM room closes for the benefit of long distance drivers and early risers |
Location | El Gallo Mexican Restaurant, 512-444-2205 2910 S Congress (directions below) Austin, Texas |
Cost | IEEE members and accompanying spouses: $11 or $13 for
dinners. Non-IEEE members: $14 or $16 for dinners. Member non-meal participants: $2. All: $2 for non-alcoholic beverages. Student members: FREE or $2 for special selections for dinners. Student visitors and non-meal participants: $5. A bar is available for those who care to purchase a beer or other alcoholic beverage. |
Reservations | If you plan on attending, please RSVP by sending an
e-mail to ieee.pi2.austin@zxtech.net. |
Notes | See the map linked from our website: https://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pes/centraltexas/
. From I–35: Exit at Oltorf and drive west. At S. Congress, turn left (south). El Gallo is about 500 feet past the next traffic light (Cumberland), on the right (west) side of Congress, directly across from the entrance to St. Edward’s University. From Ben White Blvd. (US290/SH71): Exit at S. Congress Avenue and drive north. El Gallo is about 600 feet past the next traffic light (Woodward), on the left (west) side of Congress directly across from the entrance to St. Edward’s University. |
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Topic/Title | Drinking water: What is it really and how safe is it? |
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Speaker | Dale Ritzen, Quality Manager, Austin Manufacturing
Services |
Abstract | |
Date/Time | Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - 6:30 - 8:00 PM |
Cost | The cost of the movie plus food |
Reservations | Please so we have some idea of how many people are
coming For more information: Call Gary Schrempp (512) 724-3757 for details and directions https://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/pses/ |
Location | Dell Parmer South Campus, Parmer South Building S4 Victoria Conference Room 701 East Parmer Lane Austin, TX |
Notes | Call Dale Ritzen (512) 651-5338 for details and
directions |
We encourage you, others in your organization, or other interested parties to participate in our meetings. The PSES meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 6:30pm, with the program starting at 7:00pm. For further information about the PSES, please contact Dale Ritzen at (512) 651-5338.
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For further
information, contact David Akopian david.akopian@utsa.edu |
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Notes | Receipts and
Certifications for PDHs will be
available. Doug will have a limited number of copies of his
book
available for purchase. int meeting with the Women in Engineering chapter |
Contact Leslie Martinich (lmartinich@ieee.org) for more information about the Austin TMC.
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Notes | Receipts and
Certifications for PDHs will be
available. Doug will have a limited number of copies of his
book
available for purchase. Joint meeting with the Austin Technology Management Council chapter |
Contact Leslie Martinich (lmartinich@ieee.org) for more information about the Austin TMC.
October 27, 2012: IEEE
CAS/SSC Workshop: Data Parallelism for Multi-Core Chips and GPU
Lunch and Snack are provided.
Location: Freescale Auditorium, Building A, 7700 W Parmer Ln.,
Austin, Texas, United States 78759
Date: October 27, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Registration:
https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/13461
Who should attend:
This workshop will provide a valuable overview
of parallel software and hardware implementation for new comers, and
also serve as a tutorial for experienced professionals. It
will
start with OpenCL, the new standard for parallel programming, and then
discuss several hardware infrastructures that enable the parallel
programming. Finally it ends with a live demo and tutorial on how to
program with OpenCL. Professionals at design companies, software
companies, and EDA companies, as well as professors and students
interested in parallel programming should attend.
Speakers are from IBM, AMD, Altera and Texas A&M
University.
Fee: IEEE Student/Life Member: $15, IEEE member: $50,
Non-IEEE member: $70
April 7-10, 2013: 21st
IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic, AT&T Conference
Center, Austin, Texas, USA. See https://www.arithsymposium.org
for information
Deadline for paper submission: Sept 10, 2012
IEEE Conference Search can be found at https://www.ieee.org/web/conferences/search/index.html
See also https://www.wikicfp.com - A place to organize and share Calls for Papers.
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