February 2014
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Madison Section
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Vol. 17, No. 1 | Serving IEEE Members of South Central Wisconsin |
February 2014 |
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Upcoming Events
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RFIDs for the
Birds- Date: 11:45 AM Thursday,
February 20th, 2014
- Speaker: Chris Latimer
- Location: Promega Bio Pharmaceutical Technology Center
Room Number: 122
5445 E Cheryl Pkwy
Fitchburg, Wisconsin
- To sign up for this meeting, click
here.
Topic:
Radio-frequency identification technologies in ecological
studies.Radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies were first
developed in the mid-to late 1930’s for specific military
applications. Advances in engineering and manufacturing
throughout the years have lowered the cost and size of RFID
transmitters, making them available to an array of applications
in a variety of industries. Today, RFID is commonly used in
pharmaceutical, automobile and shopping industries, with
increasing applications in environmental monitoring and
ecological studies. Mr. Latimer will present a brief history of
RFID and how it works, followed by a discussion about RFID use
in ecological studies. Then he will present a case study of
ongoing research using RFID to monitor behavior and survival of
wintering birds in Wisconsin, and finally, provide some insight
into future directions for RFID applications in ecological
research.Chris Latimer is a Ph.D. student in the wildlife ecology program
and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests
include: understanding how anthropogenic factors affect the
behavior, energetics and survival of wildlife, and technological
applications in tracking and monitoring wildlife populations.
His dissertation work involves using RFID technologies to
determine how the interaction between land-cover and weather
influence the foraging behaviors and survival of wintering birds
in Wisconsin. - Date: 11:45 AM Thursday,
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IEEE Signal
Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer Series - Date: 11:45 AM Friday,
March 14th, 2014
- Speaker: Dr. V. John Mathews of The University of Utah
- Location: (Tentative)
Promega BioPharmaceutical Technology Center
Room Number: 122
5445 E Cheryl Pkwy
Fitchburg, Wisconsin
Note: Day is FRIDAY.
Topic:
Restoration of Motor Skills in Patients with Disorders of the
Central Nervous SystemRecent technological innovations such as functional neural
stimulation (FNS) offer considerable benefits to paralyzed
individuals. FNS can produce movement in paralyzed muscles by the
application of electrical stimuli to the nerves innervating the
muscles. The first part of this talk will describe how smooth
muscle movements can be evoked using Utah slanted electrode arrays
(USEAs) inserted into the motor nerves of the peripheral nervous
system. The standard 4 x 4 mm USEAs contain 100 electrodes of
varying lengths. Implantation of a USEA in a peripheral nerve
allows highly selective electrical access to individual and small
groups of axons. We will review approaches for designing
asynchronously interleaved stimulation signals applied via
individual electrodes in the arrays to evoke smooth,
fatigue-resistant force that closely resembles normal motor
function. The second part of this talk will describe efforts to
decode cortical surface potentials, recorded with dense grids of
microelectrodes. Decoding human intent from neural signals is a
critical component of brain-computer interfaces. This information
can then be used to control the muscles in tasks involving
restoration of motor skills or to control a robot that performs
desired tasks. We will discuss recent work on decoding neural data
collected from patients implanted with microelectrode arrays. The
talk will conclude with a discussion of some of the current
research challenges in this area.Biography: Dr. V. John
Mathews is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
the University of Utah. His research interests are in nonlinear
and adaptive signal processing and application of signal
processing techniques in audio and communication systems,
biomedical engineering, and structural health management. He
chaired the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
the University of Utah during 1999-2003. Dr. Mathews is a Fellow
of IEEE. He served as the Vice President (Finance) of the IEEE
Signal Processing Society during 2003-2005 and the Vice President
(Conferences) of the Society during 2009-2011. He is a past
associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing,
and the IEEE Signal Processing Letters and the IEEE Journal of
Selected Topics in Signal Processing and currently serves on the
editorial board of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. He was a
recipient of the 2008-09 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the
National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India, and the
Utah Engineers Council’s Engineer of the Year Award in 2011. He
serves now as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal
Processing Society for 2013 and 2014. -
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Section News
Eric Rosenthal Talk Review (Provided
by Charles Gervasi):This excellent talk informed the
attendees about the “Magic” of Disney Engineering. He
explained how Disney attractions begin with storyboard drawings
posted around a room. The creative team collaboratively identifies
which ideas are the best. People whose ideas were abandoned would
enthusiastically work on the ideas that were
adopted. The work on the attractions involved
creative custom solutions that resulted in a series of funny
engineering anecdotes which he shared with us. When he worked
on the Alien Encounter attraction, his first task was to make the
attraction less scary because people could not follow the story over
the audience screaming. They got rid of a large electrical arcing
display and installed “butt thumpers” and moving whiskers to brush
against the audiences legs. They configured speakers to give the
audience the impression the alien was walking nearby. They designed
a device to emit an “alien smell” when the the alien sounded like it
was nearby. The device emitted a freshener that eliminated the smell
as soon as the alien walked away. He worked on an Indiana
Jones ride that used 600W subwoofers to give the audience the
impression of a huge rolling ball. People were reporting vibrations
in homes miles away. They had to reduce the power by
10dB.In another project, he worked on a ride with a large power
requirement. The design involved 11kV lines going to a transformer
on the roof to step it down to 480V. Noise was coupling from
the power lines to the communication system, which as a fail-safe
shuts down the entire attraction if communication is interrupted.
The shielding on the power lines was ineffective because the
electrical conduit that appeared as steel on the drawing was
actually PVC to accommodate Florida’s high water table. Reinstalling
power through steel conduit solved the problem. When he was
working on a 42nd Street New York ABC TV studio, contractors
installed soundproofing over electrical outlets. He believes they
did this on purpose, hoping to get paid to remove it, find the
outlets, and re-install it. To find the outlet locations, he got a
helium tank from a party store and connected it to the electrical
conduit, forcing the gas out the electrical boxes. Then he went
around with an inexpensive helium detector to find the locations of
the outlets. The idea we came away with is that show business
engineering projects are unique in that they have a very large
budgets, strict schedules, and subjective design requirements that
are evaluated by executives with a creative non-technical
mindset. For a copy of the talk slides, click here
(Warning: 12MBytes!) - Badger Science Olympiad Event:
(Reviewed by Tom Kaminski) On January 17th and 18th, members of
the IEEE-Madison Chapter helped with several Badger Invitational
Science Olympiad events. The Invitational provides
an opportunity for middle and high-school teams to test their Science
mettle and practice for sanctioned events of the national Science
Olympiad. The event was hosted on the UW-Madison campus, mostly
at Union South and on the College of Engineering campus. For one
event, the RadioLab, students attended a lecture on Friday and took an
exam on Saturday. Also the students had to build antennas for
the 2.4GHz radio band. IEEE-Madison members Charles
Gervasi, Craig Heilman, Robb Peebles and San Rotter helped organize
and run the event. RadioLaB is a Wisconsin-only event, but it is
proposed to be nationally sanctioned. This represents an
excellent opportunity to make the IEEE known nationally. Another
event, CircuitLab, was organized at the last minute by IEEE-Madison
members when the event coordinator had a family emergency. Tom
Kaminski and John Lombardo developed, printed and graded a
pretty tough test covering basic circuit and electrical theory.
They were surprised when one team got a perfect score on the test. -
Regular Meetings
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Section Meetings
The third Thursday of Jan – May and Sep – Dec. is reserved for a
meeting to provide recent research, developments, trends and/or
innovations in one of our membership’s technical areas. -
IEEE-MSN-ECN
Networking Meetings- Purpose: Presentations, Discussions, networking
- Date: First Thursday of even-numbered months
- Time: 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM
- Location: Sector67, 2100 Winnebago Street (East Side of
Madison) - Parking: Park in lot or on Winnebago Street.
- Process: Members are encouraged to make introductions,
describe endeavors, and make request for: contacts in target
companies, needs, resources. - Contact: For assistance, call Tim Chapman 2 0 6 – 2 5 7 0
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Membership Upgrades
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About IEEE
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Madison IEEE Section
The IEEE-Madison Section of the IEEE is a section in Region 4 of the
IEEE-USA organized to serve IEEE members in the Madison, WI area with
over 600 members. the 2013 Officers and Board Members are Tom
Kaminski – Chair, Charles Gervasi – Treasurer, Kevin Schoeneck –
Secretary, Timothy Chapman – Webmaster, Tom Kaminski – ECN Chair,
Members at Large: Mitch Bradt, Clark Johnson, Dennis Bahr, Craig
Heilman, Sandy Rotter, Steve Schultheis. -
Job Openings
Check out WIEES.com for
electrical engineering jobs in Madison and the surrounding region.
This site is maintained as a service for electrical engineers. Jobs
are displayed starting with the most recent postings first. You can
filter results by location and job type. If you are hiring an
electrical engineer in our area, for full-time or contract work, you
can post the job in the Contact Us
section on the WIEES.com site. -
Contact Us
Please direct any questions or comments to Tom Kaminski via email to
tjkaminski-at-ieee.org.
Those interested in upgrading their IEEE membership level should send
their resumes or other information showing five years of significant
performance in an IEEE-designated field to Charles J Gervasi
(cj@cgervasi.com). Madison Section Board will attempt to find Senior
IEEE members knowledgeable in the applicant’s area of practice who may
be able to provide references. You are invited to attend the informal
networking portion of the monthly Section meetings (starting at 11:30am)
to meet the Section Board members and discuss intentions.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (read
I-Triple-E) is an international non-profit, professional organization
dedicated to advancing technology innovation and excellence for the
betterment of humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community
through IEEE’s highly cited publications, conferences, technology
standards, and professional and educational activities. It has the most
members of any technical professional organization in the world, with
more than 300,000 members in around 150 countries. The IEEE consists of
38 societies, organized around specialized technical fields, with more
than 300 local organizations that hold regular meetings. For more
information, please visit: IEEE.ORG