In this paper, a new CPW (Coplanar Waveguide) fed printed UWB antenna integrated with a narrowband antenna is designed and analyzed for cognitive radio applications. The ultra-wideband (UWB) and narrowband (NB) antennas provide bandwidth from 2. 2 GHz to 11GHz and from 4. 8 GHz to 5. 7 GHz respectively and reasonable isolation between the antennas. A prototype of the integrated antenna was fabricated and its performance was verified. The dimensions of the FR4 substrate are 40 × 48 × 1. 6 mm3. The antenna represents good radiation characteristics, stable gain and good time domain manner to deliver the requirements of the current wireless communication standards. Also, two external tuning circuits were designed to show the ability of the narrowband antenna for reconfiguration.

This paper presents a practical implementation of explicit self-tuning control to a hydraulic robot for trajectory tracking. The proposed control strategy is simple, however, adapts itself to system variations such as load changes, noise and disturbances and it may be suitable for non-minimum phase control systems. Computational complexity of self-tuning control is not a limitation anymore because of increased computing power of computers even for high speed applications. This situation makes the self-tuning control an important alternative to PID control, which is the most widely used controller in industrial processes. Extensive experiments conducted on hydraulic robots to demonstrate and verify the control performance of the proposed self-tuning control in comparison with the traditionally designed, PID control.

I intend to show that the fine-tuning argument is not a theistic one, and is therefore not desirable for the theist. I will argue that (1) if the fine-tuning of the cosmos exceeds that which is required for the existence of human beings, it would not be helpful to the believer to prove the existence of God. (2) From the theist’s point of view, there are two objections to the fine-tuning argument: first, the extravagance objection, which states that this argument also includes other improbable events as evidence for the existence of God, though the theist does not mean that. Second, the backfire objection, which states that the advocate of fine-tuning reasoning defeats her/his purpose. Third, the fine-tuning argument assumes that the occurrence of an unlikely event requires a different explanation than the occurrence of probable events, and this is a false presupposition, which leads to the “God of the gaps” objection. The theist independently does not accept this distinction; she/he believes that the explanation of both probable and improbable events equally requires assuming the existence of God. So, since the fine-tuning argument is based on assumptions that are inconsistent with theism, the theist should not find it worrisome that the fine-tuning argument is not a successful one.

Fine-Tuning Argument (PTA) starts with the claim that the physical constants, the laws of nature and, accordingly, the interconnections between the parts of the physical world have been fine-tuned such that we may infer the existence of some supernatural fine-tuner whose attributes, inferred through some other possible inferences, may allow calling him "God". FTA, at both local and global/universal levels, takes the empirical data of natural sciences as the evidence of the intelligent purposeful agent having a hand in the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe, so that the apparent cosmic coincidence among the physical constants as well as .the events, from physical to biological and psychological ones, indicate some purposeful fine-tuning leading to a life-permitting and even intelligence-permitting world. Now, PTA may be considered as the most popular variety of Teleological Argument and Design Argument that has attracted the attention of some specialists among the scientists, theologians and philosophers interested in searching some sound argument for the existence of God based not on religious sacred texts but on human cognitive faculties. But PTA, like Teleological Argument and Design Argument, suffering some problematic features, needs philosophical elucidation and evaluation. In this paper, the author, sympathetic towards those who try to scientifically and philosophically rationalize their belief in the fine-tuner/designer/maker/creator of the world, and have a trust on PTA, tries to examine the "argument" on the basis of some Islamic and Western philosophical achievements. The, author, willing to disagree with any ultimate agnosticism and negativism, tries to show the weak and strong features of PTA to help the believers, in particular those who have a theological trend and position, to know the weaknesses of the "Argument", on the one hand, and its capacities in the face of both its deniers and rivals, on the other hand.

The study of low power wireless radio systems is an area in modern defense that especially deals with higher performance filters. In recent years, Gm-C filters have drawn attention due to their high frequency performance and integrability. In this paper, a fourth-order low-pass Gm-C filter with on-chip automatic tuning circuit is presented. The core of this filter is a low-voltage high-frequency CMOS inverter-based operational transconductance amplifier (OTA). To improve the linearity of the OTA, a new common-mode feedback (CMFB) circuit is presented that is combined with a common-mode feedforward (CMFF) circuit. Moreover, a new automatic tuning circuit is presented. By tuning the bulk voltage of transistors, this circuit compensates the effects of mismatches and temperature changes on the OTA, and therefore, on the filter cutoff frequency. Furthermore, this circuit consumes small portion of the power consumed by the filter. The circuits are designed and simulated in Cadence using TSMC 90nm CMOS technology and a 1 V power supply. The post-layout simulation results show that the DC differential gain, common-mode gain,-3 dB cutoff frequency and unity-gain frequency of the OTA are 34. 7 dB,-26 dB, 255 MHz and 13. 8 GHz, respectively. The cutoff frequency of the filter is 1 GHz, and by applying 0. 2 Vp-p input voltages, the third-order intermodulation (IM3) of the filter at the cutoff frequency is-38 dB. The power consumption and the area of the filter are 4. 8 mW and 0. 043 × 0. 038 mm2, respectively. Moreover, Monte Carlo simulations show the good robustness of proposed filter against the process errors.

In this work, the different fuels (citric acid, glycine and urea) were used for solution combustion synthesis of CoFe2O4 powders. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, electron microscopy and vibrating sample magnetometry techniques were employed for characterization of phase evolution, cation distribution, microstructure and magnetic properties of the as-combusted CoFe2O4 powders. Single phase CoFe2O4 powders with partially inverse structure in which the Co2+ cations are distributed in both tetrahedral and octahedral sites were synthesized by the citric acid, glycine and urea fuels. The as-combusted CoFe2O4 powders by the citric acid fuel exhibited the highest inversion coefficient. The crystallite size of the as-combusted CoFe2O4 powders synthesized by urea fuel was 15 nm, increased to 41 and 52 nm for the glycine and citric acid fuels, respectively. Furthermore, the solution combusted CoFe2O4 powders showed ferromagnetic behavior with saturation magnetization of 61. 9, 63. 6 and 41. 6 emu/g for the citric acid, glycine and urea fuels, respectively. The high crystallinity and particle size of the as-combusted CoFe2O4 powders using glycine fuel led to the highest magnetization and the moderate coercivity.

The main advantage of heuristic or metaheuristic algorithms compared to exact optimization methods is their ability in handling large-scale instances within a reasonable time, albeit at the expense of losing a guarantee for achieving the optimal solution. Therefore, metaheuristic techniques are appropriate choices for solving NP-hard problems to near optimality. Since the parameters of heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms have a great influence on their effectiveness and efficiency, parameter tuning and calibration has gained importance. In this paper a new approach for robust parameter tuning of heuristics and metaheuristics is proposed, which is based on a combination of Design of Experiments (DOE), Signal to Noise (S/N) ratio, Shannon entropy, and VIKOR methods, which not only considers the solution quality or the number of fitness function evaluations, but also aims to minimize the running time. In order to evaluate the performance of the suggested approach, a computational analysis has been performed on the Simulated Annealing (SA) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) methods, which have been successfully applied in solving respectively the n-queens and the Uncapacitated Single Allocation Hub Location combinatorial problems. Extensive experimental results showed that by using the presented approach the average number of iterations and the average running time of the SA were respectively improved 12 and 10.2 times compared to the un-tuned SA. Also, the quality of certain solutions was improved in the tuned GA, while the average running time was 2.5 times faster compared to the un-tuned GA.