This is how the gases is collected for the e-nose nowadays. (*)
E-nose to detect the lung cancer from the breath
By Engy Fouda
Master’s student’s ultimate goal is using the electronic nose (e-nose) to analyze the patient’s breath for early lung cancer detection. He is investigating the e-nose usage for different applications as pre-steps to reach his goal. He believes that the e-nose is the fastest detection method for lung cancer.
Dr. Khaled Alashmouny talking about Egypt Scholars Inc., having its logo in Arabic on the shelf behind him.
When Khaled Alashmouny was 10 years old, he used to fix burned AC fuse by twisting 3 filaments of a copper wire and inserting them instead of the fuse to get the AC working again. A couple years later he was electrically shocked many times while playing: “disassembly the refrigerator” to make some measurements with his new toy “multi-meter.”
Alashmouny, today an Analog Integrated Circuit Designer in Apple, is no longer simply twisting copper wire. He holds Ph.D. from Michigan University, is working on the development of future Apple mobile devices. Before joining Apple, he registered several patents and published several papers related to recording and analyzing brain neural signals to detect the sleep apnea syndrome.
Alashmouny said that his greatest contribution though is as the force behind the prevailing scientific and technological online hub represented in a non-profit organization called Egypt Scholars (ES) Inc. The Egyptian revolution demonstrated how networking people through social media can change the world face politically. It inspired him to embark a new scientific and technical volunteering initiative. After discussions with a small group of graduate students and professionals living in different parts of the world, they collaborated to set up ES as a new ecosystem with slogan: “Every Mind makes a Difference.”
”The one must work on something that prosper not during his life but extends its benefits after his lifetime,” Alashmouny said.
They started with a Facebook page then a wiki-site then currently a complete online platform. “We surmounted the limits of the limits,” Dr. Amjad Abu Jbara, Applied Scientist in Microsoft and ES Board Member said.
Alashmouny’s slow venerable talking, sometimes using classic Arabic Language, conceals his enormous energy, Abu Jbara said. “He is a people magnet, energy generator and dynamo,” he added.
Egypt Scholars is not Alashmouny’s first experience in volunteering and gathering people to give sessions and share research experience. In 2010, he was the chair for engineering symposium in University in Michigan, the university awarded him “College of Engineering Distinguished Leadership Award,” for his exceptional contributions.
“He is very persistent, very diligent and always know how to find time,” Dr. Ahmed Hassan, Researcher in Microsoft Research and ES Board member said. ES should focus on more precise goals in 2015, “When there is a far away goal, you run in too many directions wishing any get you closer to your dream,” he added.
Alashmouny was an apathetic teenager, until a day he got sick and his doctor sarcastically remarked on that attitude but his mother zealously strove to vindicate his behavior. “It was a turning point in my life, when I found my Mom thinks that well of me, I reclaimed, to not let her down,” said Alashmouny.
“He has immense passion and his ambition sometimes exceed what all of us as volunteers can afford!” Dr. Abdelrehim Ahmed, Researcher in Microsoft and ES pioneer member said. Dr. Ahmed concurred that currently, empowering the students and teaching them how to make research and how to apply for Masters and Ph.D. degrees abroad are the most important tasks for ES.
Alashmouny envisions Egypt regaining its position as a cornerstone center for excellence in modern sciences, high-tech industries and entrepreneurship. “I learned that the one should develop and invest in the people not the land.”
I have always been in the dilemma of which microcontroller to choose and work on, on the previous courses or projects I worked on, my supervisor used to take that decision for me to leave me the challenge of getting it working.
But now I’ll start my project that has certain limitations; I want to choose the easier cheaper & most suitable microcontroller this time that fits that project, I decided to dig it hard and I thought about sharing this information and document my trip between the different types and brands, may be it will be useful to someone else who stands in my current position, or to me later when I get older and suffer from memory loss ;- ).
If you want a brief introduction to microcontroller, here is this link:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/microcontroller_tutorial.shtml
& of the different types of the augmented boards here you are this link:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robot_parts_list_microcontrollers.shtml
I plan to make a comparison of these different augmented boards later to help in the beginner projects, and for me I do it to end this hassle every time I decide to teach the course of introduction to microcontrollers, please follow the posts.
Now I’ll compare between the microcontrollers themselves, the larges two names in the market nowadays are PIC and ATMEL.
I searched a lot for the differences between them, downloaded a lot of datasheets and finally of course visited some forums that discussed this topic.
To summarize what I found on the forums, simply I found that everybody is saying that there is not a huge real difference in the capabilities, ATMEL is cheaper, easier, has lot of free debuggers, or purchasing $50 Dragon, while PIC is more expensive.
for more details & following up the discussions here you are the forums:
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/micro-controllers/20140-atmel-vs-pic.html
http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?t=1253
Please take in consideration, that the comparison I’ll do won’t take the programming language in consideration because I know all of them, I know C/C++, Assembly, Java, Visual Basic,..etc.
I’ll mainly concentrate on the I/O no. and memory required because of my current project.
My current project has 3 main limitations:
1. Large I/O pins, about 400 pins!!
2. Large Memory required about 4MB; this is large to a microcontroller!!
3.Power consumbtion.
Of course I’ll use many microcontroller chips; the design will have them cascaded; some working in parallel and other in sequence.
No need for AD as all IO are already digital but may be I’ll make use of the interrupts pins.
For the above limitations, of course I can’t use any augmented boards, many of their features will be useless, and moreover they will decrease my IO & memory which I need so hard.
Now I’ll start digging the features and different types of ATMEL.
The best device introduction is on this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmel_AVR
Basic Families
AVRs are generally classified into four broad groups:
tinyAVR — the ATtiny series
0.5–8 kB program memory
6–32-pin package
Limited peripheral set
megaAVR — the ATmega series
4–256 kB program memory
28–100-pin package
Extended instruction set (Multiply instructions and instructions for handling larger program memories)
Extensive peripheral set
XMEGA — the ATxmega series
16–384 kB program memory
44–64–100-pin package (A4, A3, A1)
Extended performance features, such as DMA, “Event System”, and cryptography support.
Extensive peripheral set with DACs
of course if I’m going to choose ATMEL then it will be ATEM XMEGA, for further details & for downloading the data sheets, here you are the link:
http://www.atmel.com/products/AVR/default_xmega.asp
To make it short, these are the most important links in this page:
For comparing and purchasing ATMEL, please visit :
For comparing and purchasing PIC, please visit :
http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchID=8097&mid=14&lang=en
OK, in fact there are many other microcontrollers, like Motorolla, let’s have af further deeper look at it in the next post ISA and compare it to PIC and ATMEL.