COVID-19 Vaccine and Booster Shots Compatibility Analyzer using CMOS-based Monochrome Encoding

The continuous increase in COVID-19 positive cases in the Philippines might further weaken the local healthcare system. As such, an efficient system must be implemented to further improve the immunization efforts of the country. In this paper, a contactless digital electronic device is proposed to assess the vaccine and booster brand compatibility. Using Logisim 2.7.1, the logic diagrams were designed and simulated with the help of truth tables and Boolean functions. Moreover, the finalized logic circuit design was converted into its equivalent complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and stick diagrams to help contextualize how the integrated circuits will be designed. Results have shown that the proposed device was able to accept three inputs of the top three COVID-19 vaccine brands (Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer) and assess the compatibility of heterologous vaccinations. With the successful results of the circuit, it can be concluded that this low-power device can be used to manufacture a physical prototype for use in booster vaccination sites. © 2022 IEEE.

An Approach of Skill-Based Education for Industry-Ready Electrical Engineers: Power Electronics Course as A Case Study

Recently, and particularly after the Covid19 pandemic period and during teaching different courses, it has been noticed that most of the undergraduate engineering students have rising the type of questions such as ''Why we are learning this particular course?'' and ''What are the main benefits and direct impacts of such course on our future carrier? Also as a direct impact of the new available job requirements, it becomes most importance to prepare future engineers to thrive in recent dynamic changing in employment landscape. Hence for students who want to compete and involved in promising working opportunities, it is important to bridging the gap between teaching courses and the industry requirements by focusing on the concept of ''Industry Ready Engineers Since most of recent jobs concentrate on specific required competencies, the author believes that it is important now to give more focusing on the skill-based learning methodology. This paper introduces an approach focusing on group categorization for the recent specific required skills of electrical engineers;then how to involve these skills in specific teaching courses. The main objectives of such approach is to intentionally improve such group skills (one by one) throughout the all program courses in order to introduce a final graduated engineer with great working readiness skills. The approach is validated and evaluated on teaching the power electronics course 1 as a case study. © 2023 IEEE.

Enhancing the student experience in pre‐ and mid‐COVID‐19 pandemic period by upgrading the power electronics laboratory practice curriculum

Laboratory practices, which represent a vital part of electrical engineering education, have especially in the last few years been subjected to numerous challenges. The paper presents a concept of upgrading the laboratory practice curriculum in power electronics by introducing computer simulations. Due to the recognized shortcomings of the previous approach, the curriculum was closely reviewed, compared to the concepts from existing literature, and intensively upgraded by the introduction of the Ansys Simplorer computer program. The intensity of the process upgrade was enhanced by the COVID‐19 pandemic and related lockdowns. The introduced curriculum changes enabled the students to approach individual topics more gradually, reducing the gaps between the behavior of ideal and real power electronics circuits. The results of student feedback, obtained by a web‐based survey and a pre‐exam quiz, demonstrate that students recognize the new approach as being more gradual and beneficial, enabling them to improve their understanding of specific phenomena and to master the topics of power electronics with ease and satisfaction.

New President: Marching on with Futuristic Vision and Programs [President's Message]

I am humbled by the trust that the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) has placed in me as their elected president of PELS for the next two years (2023-2024). I would especially like to thank the outgoing president, Liuchen Chang, the IEEE PELS staff, and all the volunteers in our society. As we all know, the past few years have been challenging, to say the least, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenges, our outgoing president, executive leaders, and staff have done an incredible job of keeping our society financially strong and as active as ever. Their careful stewardship of our society will allow many new programs to be established in the next two years, with a major reinvestment back into PELS membership. © 2014 IEEE.

All quiet on the COVID-19 front-Real experience must be bought for power electronics beginners-Real e

This paper introduces some actual efforts of our laboratory in power electronics education, especially for newly assigned undergraduate students, even during COVID-19 pandemic. The real hands-on experience is still important as a 'first step' before introducing model-based power electronics circuit design and analysis, which will become increasingly important in the future. © 2022 IEEE.

Enhancing the student experience in pre- and mid-COVID-19 pandemic period by upgrading the power electronics laboratory practice curriculum

Laboratory practices, which represent a vital part of electrical engineering education, have especially in the last few years been subjected to numerous challenges. The paper presents a concept of upgrading the laboratory practice curriculum in power electronics by introducing computer simulations. Due to the recognized shortcomings of the previous approach, the curriculum was closely reviewed, compared to the concepts from existing literature, and intensively upgraded by the introduction of the Ansys Simplorer computer program. The intensity of the process upgrade was enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. The introduced curriculum changes enabled the students to approach individual topics more gradually, reducing the gaps between the behavior of ideal and real power electronics circuits. The results of student feedback, obtained by a web-based survey and a pre-exam quiz, demonstrate that students recognize the new approach as being more gradual and beneficial, enabling them to improve their understanding of specific phenomena and to master the topics of power electronics with ease and satisfaction.

Modeling of Six-Phase Induction Machine with Two Isolated Neutrals under One Open Phase Fault

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional laboratory sessions or face-To-face demonstrations for advanced electrical engineering level students in the field of power electronics and drives had to be substituted by e-learning to accommodate the new virtual teaching environment. This paper explains the operation of a symmetrical six-phase induction drive having two isolated neutrals configuration (2N) under one open phase fault (OPF) as a case study. The whole system, including the OPF, has been modeled in MATLAB Simulink which is intended for teaching and research purposes in the field of power electronics and drives. The aim of this paper is to elaborate the pre-and post-fault behaviour of the stator current, speed and torque. The machine model presented here is based on vector space decomposition (VSD) and controller using Indirect Rotor Field Oriented Control (IRFOC). In addition, this paper explains the external resistance used to initiate the OPF. The described MATLAB simulation helps the students to understand and observed the amplitude of stator current during pre-and post-fault conditions with respect to the mechanical loading. This model allows preliminary analysis for monitoring and comparison of machine performance. © 2022 IEEE.

A Deep Learning Powered System to Lie Detection While Online Study

Many education facilities have recently switched to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of online learning makes it easier for dishonest behaviors, such as cheating or lying during lessons. We propose a new artificial intelligence - powered solution to help educators solve this rising problem for a fairer learning environment. We created a visual representation contrastive learning method with the MobileNetV2 network as the backbone to improve predictability from an unlabeled dataset which can be deployed on low power consumption devices. The experiment shows an accuracy of up to 59%, better than several previous research, proving the usability of this approach. © 2022 Lavoisier. All rights reserved.

Variable Frequency Control for Constant Current Constant Voltage Inductive Wireless EV Charging System

EV market has risen despite COVID-19 pandemic. Wireless EV charging is safer operating, saves the environment, and is convenient with automated charging. Inductive wireless EV Charging (IPT) should be fewer power electronics components to improve the system's efficiency. This paper presents the fewer components constant current - constant voltage (CC-CV) IPT using frequency adaptive frequency control technique that does not need a primary dc-dc converter. The proposed CC-CV IPT charging building block consists of the front-end rectifier, CC-CV frequency controlled inverter, IPT coils, secondary high-frequency rectifier, and step resistive load battery simulator. The load current and voltage signals are detected and feedback to the PI control block that controls the frequency of the PWM gate drive of the inverter. The simulation and experimental results show the operating mode of 6A CC and 102 V CV chargings were performed. The wireless EV charging can be operated for the CC and CV chargings using variable frequency control. © 2022 IEEJ-IAS.

Distinguished Plenary Speakers Chart Future Technology Path for APEC 2022: Researchers unveil advances in bidirectional wide bandgap FETs

For the last two years, the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) was organized in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the leading international conference was delivered in a hybrid format in Houston, Texas, 20-24 March at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Because some overseas and domestic participants in our community, including domestic, were unable to physically attend due to travel restrictions and other COVID-related concerns, the organizers made a decision to provide select recorded conference content (Plenary, Technical, and Industry Sessions) in an on-demand format for a period of time (March 28-April 29) after the conference ended in Houston on 24 March. © 2014 IEEE.

Hope for Resuming Our In-Person Events [President's Message]

The hybrid format of IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) 2022, held 20-24 March in Houston, Tx, USA, was a refreshing change from the virtual conferences of the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of hundreds of organizers and volunteers, APEC 2022 signals the return to our in-person events. It was a joyful reunion of IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) members, volunteers and exhibitors. The breakfast event of 'WiE, YP, and You: How to become involved with PELS and PSMA too' was a huge success, the fruit of the tireless work of the PELS Women in Engineering (WiE) and Young Professionals (YP) Committees. You can find detailed materials including FAQs of many programs of the PELS, prepared by dozens of PELS volunteers on the WiE events website: https://www.ieee-pels.org/membership/wie/wie-events. The 'YP Reception at APEC 2022' cosponsored by PELS and Industry Applications Society (IAS) attracted over 100 young professionals and students to a social gathering at The Grotto, Houston. Our hybrid Spring Administrative Committee (AdCom) Meeting and several PELS standing committee meetings held during APEC 2022 presented a venue for our volunteers and friends to catch up. © 2014 IEEE.

An IoT Approach for Monitoring UV Disinfection Robots

The use of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) technology as a means of disinfecting hospitals and other frontline settings has increased significantly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the science of UVGI is well established, it can be difficult to determine in practice if sufficient levels of UVC has been irradiated to kill the target microbes in a room. This research presents the development of a low-cost wireless UVC sensor that can be used to systematically track the UV irradiation dose on target surfaces during a UV disinfection procedure. We present key elements of the design of this device, which included a custom PCB, enclosure, operating software, and graphical user interface. The applicability of the system was assessed through an experiment where the devices were placed at 12 locations in a CT scan treatment room that was subject to a UVGI disinfection procedure using an autonomous UV robot. Over the course of three cleaning sessions, each lasting approximately 10 minutes, it was found that each site location received an average UVC dose of 13mJ/cm2, which is more than published D90 values for SARS-Cov-2, influenza, and a number of known pathogens that are commonly found in hospital settings. This study provides early validation of the potential effectiveness of low-power wireless UV level monitoring technology, which may form part of future distributed room sensing networks or as part of smart wearable devices carried by relevant hospital staff. © 2021 IEEE.

A Novel Smart Healthcare System Design for Internet of Health Things

COVID-19 might be devastatingly affecting our enterprises, public activities and individual prepping norms and principles but it has also sparked a digital revolution of innovation in different fields. The objective of this paper is to understand the in-depth role of the Internet of Things (IoT) in eHealth to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. This paper covers numerous applications of IoT in healthcare starting from research, telemedicine, teleconsultation via chatbots and virtual assistants providing instantaneous medical help online. Telemedicine and remote patient monitoring is the need of the hour to avoid direct contact with the patients which have been made possible via IoT and its associated tools like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain technology and Cloud Computing. With such high volumes and diversity of data being generated from IoT there is a strong need for connectivity and streaming analytics thus 5G technology and its applications have been discussed like smart 5G connected ambulances and smart 5G based hospitals. Long Range Radio is another promising technology which due to its low power operation and long-distance data transmission at higher speeds is turning out to be the defacto technology for IoT networks across the globe especially in areas with poor network coverage. Seeing the demand for both ventilators and skilled medical professionals due to lack of proper medical infrastructure worldwide, a review of IoT-based smart ventilators has also been carried out. The paper concludes with possible solutions to IoT challenges in healthcare by proposing a smart healthcare model design. Moreover keeping in mind the situation of Covid-19 Pandemic the module also comprises a UVC Disinfection box that would help in eliminating the risk of the virus entering our homes. © 2021 IEEE.

IoT Cloud Computing Middleware for crowd monitoring and evacuation

Map-Reduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. This model has a single point of failure: the master, who coordinates the work in a cluster. On the contrary, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are distributed systems that scale and feature large numbers of small, computationally limited, low-power, unreliable nodes. In this article, we provide a top-down approach explaining the architecture, implementation and rationale of a distributed fault-tolerant IoT middleware. Specifically, this middleware consists of multiple mini-computing devices (Raspberry Pi) connected in a WSN which implement the Map-Reduce algorithm. First, we explain the tools used to develop this system. Second, we focus on the Map-Reduce algorithm implemented to overcome common network connectivity issues, as well as to enhance operation availability and reliability. Lastly, we provide benchmarks for our middleware as a crowd tracking application for a preserved building in Greece (i.e., M. Hatzidakis’ residence). The results of this study show that IoT middleware with low-power and low-cost components are viable solutions for medium-sized cloud computing distributed and parallel computing centres. Potential uses of this middleware apply for monitoring buildings and indoor structures, in addition to crowd tracking to prevent the spread of COVID-19. © 2021, North Atlantic University Union NAUN. All rights reserved.