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The growing prevalence of counterfeit stories on the internet has fostered significant interest towards fast and scalable detection of fake news in the machine learning community. While several machine learning techniques for this purpose have emerged, we observe that there is a need to evaluate the impact of noise on these techniques' performance, where noise constitutes news articles being mistakenly labeled as fake (or real). This work takes a step in that direction, where we examine the impact of noise on a state-of-the-art, structural model based on BiLSTM (Bidirectional Long-Short Term Model) for fake news detection, Hierarchical Discourse-level Structure for Fake News Detection by Karimi and Tang (Reference no. 9).

With the wide spread use of AI-driven systems in the edge (a.k.a edge intelligence systems), such as autonomous driving vehicles, wearable biotech devices, intelligent manufacturing, etc., such systems are becoming very critical for our day-to-day lives. A challenge in designing edge intelligence systems is that we have to deal with a large number of constraints in two design spaces that form the basis of such systems: the edge design space and the deep learning design space. Thus in this work, a new systematic, extendable, manual approach, READLE, is proposed for creating representations of specifications in edge intelligent systems, capturing constraints in the edge system design space (e.g. timing constraints and other performance constraints) and constraints in the deep learning space (e.g. model training duration, required level of accuracy) in a coherent fashion. In particular, READLE leverages benefits of real-time logic and binary decision diagrams to generate unified specifications. Several insights learned in building READLE are also discussed, which should help in future research in the domain of formal specifications for edge intelligent systems.

In this work we present an account of the status of requirements engineering in the gaming industry. Recent papers in the area were surveyed. Characterizations of the gaming industry were deliberated upon by portraying its relations with the market industry. Some research directions in the area of requirements engineering in the gaming industry were also mentioned.

To evaluate the frequency and effects of blast-related otologic injuries.his retrospective study was conducted at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and comprised charts of patients who were victims of bomb explosions between January 2011 and July 2013. Frequency and percentages were reported using cross tabulation with size of bomb, distance of person from blast and the presence of victim in open or closed space. Association of associated variables were also analysed.Of the 100 patients, 81(81%) were men and 19(19%) were women. Besides, 68(68%) patients were aged30 years. Also, 78(78%) subjects were exposed to80kg of explosives and 68(68%) were at a distance of10m. Furthermore, 61(61%) patients were exposed to explosion in openspace. The prevalence of ear injuries was 21(21%). The odds of experiencing various symptoms of ears was high in those who were exposed to80 kg of explosives (odds ratio: 3.38; 95% confidence interval, 1.16, 9.91). The odds of hearing loss in those who were within 10m was 8.62 (95% confidence interval: 2.72, 27.28) times than those who were10 m from the site of explosion.Otologic injuries were frequently associated with large blasts.

With the advancement of silicon electronics under threat from physical limits to dimensional scaling, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) released a white paper in 2008, detailing the ways in which the semiconductor industry can keep itself continually growing in the twenty-first century. Two distinct paths were proposed: More-Moore and More-than-Moore. While More-Moore approach focuses on the continued use of state-of-the-art, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology for next generation electronics, More-than-Moore approach calls for a disruptive change in the system architecture and integration strategies. In this doctoral thesis, we investigate both the approaches to obtain performance improvement in the state-of-the-art, CMOS electronics. We present a novel channel material, SiSn, for fabrication of CMOS circuits. This investigation is in line with the More-Moore approach because we are relying on the established CMOS industry infrastructure to obtain an incremental change in the integrated circuit (IC) performance by replacing silicon channel with SiSn. We report a simple, low-cost and CMOS compatible process for obtaining single crystal SiSn wafers. Tin (Sn) is deposited on silicon wafers in the form of a metallic thin film and annealed to facilitate diffusion into the silicon lattice. This diffusion provides for sufficient SiSn layer at the top surface for fabrication of CMOS devices. We report a lowering of band gap and enhanced mobility for SiSn channel MOSFETs compared to silicon control devices. We also present a process for fabrication of vertically integrated flexible silicon to form 3D integrated circuits. This disruptive change in the state-of-the-art, in line with the More-than-Moore approach, promises to increase the performance per area of a silicon chip. We report a process for stacking and bonding these pieces with polymeric bonding and interconnecting them using copper through silicon vias (TSVs). We report a process for fabricating through polymer vias (TPVs) facilitating the fabrication of sensor arrays and control electronics on the opposite sides of the same flexible polymer. Finally, we present a process to fabricate stretchable metallic thin films with up to 800% stretchability, and report two distinct applications for these devices which cannot be done using current techniques.

This work focuses on the problem of high-performance robust control of a dc motor in the presence of a low-resolution position encoder. An observer assisted feedback control scheme is presented in which a robust extended high-gain observer (EHGO) is designed for simultaneous estimation of motor speed and lumped system uncertainties. The conventional approach of calculating speed by direct differentiation of encoder pulses is superseded by the EHGO technique that allows significant reduction in quantization noise associated with the encoder without requiring a low-pass filter. For the speed control problem, an improved integral sliding mode controller is proposed with a sigmoid boundary layer. The integral action compensates for the boundary layer error thereby guaranteeing tracking error convergence to zero. Stability, robustness and accuracy of the proposed observer and controller are established mathematically. Simulations and experimental tests are carried out that validate the given scheme.

There has been an exponential increase in the performance of silicon based semiconductor devices in the past few decades. This improvement has mainly been due to dimensional scaling of the MOSFET. However, physical constraints limit the continued growth in device performance. To overcome this problem, novel channel materials are being developed to enhance carrier mobility and hence increase device performance. This work explores a novel semiconducting alloy - Silicon-tin (SiSn) as a channel material for CMOS applications. For the first time ever, MOS devices using SiSn as channel material have been demonstrated. A low cost, scalable and manufacturable process for obtaining SiSn by diffusion of Sn into silicon has also been explored. The channel material thus obtained is electrically characterized by fabricating MOSCAPs and Mesa-shaped MOSFETs. The SiSn devices have been compared to similar devices fabricated using silicon as channel material.