207 research outputs found

    Supplemental Material, files - Flexible model predictive control based on multivariable online adjustment mechanism for robust gait generation

    No full text
    Supplemental Material, files for Flexible model predictive control based on multivariable online adjustment mechanism for robust gait generation by Sheng Dong, Zhaohui Yuan, Xiaojun Yu, Muhammad Tariq Sadiq, Jianrui Zhang, Fuli Zhang and Cheng Wang in International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems</p

    THE effects of ageing on driving related performance

    No full text
    According to one estimate, about 40 percent of the driving population will be over the age of 60by the year 2020 in the UK and currently, several hundred thousand drivers with dementia holddriving licenses. The number of motor vehicle crashes per unit distance of automobile travel is“U”-shaped, with risk increasing slightly between the ages of 55 and 60, but risk increasing witheach successive five-year interval. Some individuals who have mild dementia possess sufficientdriving skills to be designated as fit drivers. The most challenging assessment and decision for thephysician/licensing authority as regards fitness to drive lies in drivers who are questionablydemented or are in a state of very mild dementia.In the absence of a reliable standard protocol, some clinicians make judgment based on selfreporting,which has risks associated with it as lack of insight and judgment are potential commontraits of the population experiencing cognitive decline. Seldom is recourse made by healthprofessionals to on-road assessment as a first alternative as it requires a fee and such testingcenters are not readily available everywhere. This research addresses this issue of theidentification of cognitive tests that can be used to assess an individual’s ability to drive andespecially of those individuals that are questionably demented and are the most difficult toidentify. A younger and an older group consisting of 56 drivers in total were administered ninedifferent cognitive tests and two drives (Drive-I and Drive-II) on the STISIM driving simulator.The cognitive test ufov3 (involving the identification of a central target and simultaneously theradial localization of a peripheral target embedded in distracter triangles), which is the thirdsubtest of the UFOV (Useful Field of View) test showed the highest discriminating ability inseparating “poor-drivers” from “not-poor-drivers”, with 92.86 % of the drivers correctlyclassified. The next best discriminating ability in decreasing order of strength was that of dichoticlistening test, trail making test, rey-copy test and paper folding test. Also, age was found to be anexcellent discriminator of “poor-drivers” and “not-poor-drivers” with 91.07 % of the driverscorrectly classified. A composite cognitive measure consisting of the sum of all nine cognitivetests was not a better predictor than the ufov3 test alone; overall it was still an excellentdiscriminator, classifying 89.29 % of drivers correctly. The commonly recommended ClockDrawing test and the Trail Making test did not emerge as significant predictors of driving ability.A general driving skills linear model for prediction purposes was derived that explained 59 % ofthe variation in a general driving performance index with the ufov3 test, the dichotic listening testand the rey-recall test as significant predictors. Recommendations are made as to how this testshould be used to screen potentially at risk drivers

    Hydraulic simulations to evaluate and predict design and operation of the Chashma Right Bank Canal

    No full text
    Irrigation systems / Irrigation canals / Flow control / Velocity / Canal regulation techniques / Hydraulics / Simulation models / Design / Operations / Crop-based irrigation / Distributary canals / Water delivery / Policy / Protective irrigation / Water allocation / Water requirements / Sedimentation / Water distribution / Equity / Water conveyance / Pakistan / Chashma Right Bank Canal

    Beberapa Isu Haraki di dalam Karya-karya Hadis Sayyid Muhammad Nuh

    No full text
    Sayyid Muhammad Nuh is a prominent ‘haraki’ figure and has produced a number of works in the field of hadith studies. He has been involved in the dakwa movement of the Muslim Brotherhood which influenced his approach in the production of his works, in terms of the ‘haraki manhaj’ and methods. Almost all the works of Sayyid Muhammad Nuh emphasized issues of dakwa and tarbiyah, whether in the field of tafsir, hadith, history and issues of the Muslims’ society. Moreover, the issues that he highlighted were practical and the application of ‘haraki’ approach in production of writings brought about significant lesson to the dakwa movement, including the ones in the field of hadith. The author presents three of his works in the field of hadith which have been among the most referred and widely read in the dakwa circle, including the dakwa movement in Malaysia. His selected works in the field of hadith are ‘Tawjihat of the Prophet `ala al-Tariq’ (Hadiths of Guidance on the Dakwa Path), ‘Manhaj al -Rasul fi Ghars Ruh al-Jihad fi Nufus Ashabih’ (The Messenger’s Approach in Inspiring Spirit of al-Jihad in the Companions), and ‘Min Akhlaq al-Nasr fi Jiyl al-Sahabah’ (Winning Attitudes in the Generation of the Companions). Through this article, the authors highlights a number of ‘haraki’ issues based on the works of Sayyid Muhammad Nuh and the important lessons that he has highlighted for the people of dakwa in facing the dakwa path, based on the hadith of the Messenger

    Macrovascular Complications and their risk factors in Type 2 Diabetic Patients in Hyderabad, Pakistan.

    No full text
    Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM), is the universally occurring non-communicable disease as well as exemplary health problem affecting peo-ple worldwide.1 The number of cases of DM are rising at an enormous pace irrespective of any age, gender, economic status or ethnicity around the globe.Objective: To evaluate the macro-vascular complications and its correlation with different risk factors among type-2 diabetic patients.Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Red Crescent General Hospital Latifabad Hyderabad from October 2018 to October 2020. Type 2 diabetics of either gender, between age 20 and 70 years, on diabetic medication visited during the study duration were included in the study. Data related to socio-demographic details and clinical features was collect-ed from the participants using a written questionnaire. Collected data was analyzed using SPSS ver. 22.Results: Significant association (p&lt;0.05) was demonstrated between Coro-nary artery diseases and the risk factors like; age of patient, the duration of diabetes mellitus, diastolic as well as systolic blood pressures, body mass index and serum triglycerides levels. While the statistically significant asso-ciation (p&lt;0.05) of peripheral vascular diseases with the duration of diabe-tes mellitus, systolic blood pressure and serum triglyceride levels. Whereas, cerebrovascular disease was associated (p&lt;0.05) with age, systolic and diastolic BP.Conclusion: The coronary artery disease seems to be most frequent macro-vascular complication among the type 2 diabetic patients. Whereas the risk factors including; advancing age, duration of diabetes mellitus, hyperten-sion, BMI as well as serum triglycerides levels are the most significant fac-tors for these complications.Key Words: Coronary artery disease, Cerebrovascular Disease, Diabetes Mellitus Type 2, Peripheral vascular diseas

    Numerical Simulation and Experimental Research on Flow Force and Pressure Stability in a Nozzle-Flapper Servo Valve

    No full text
    In the nozzle flapper servo valve, the transient flow force on the flapper is the fundamental reason that affects the pressure stability. The pressure pulsation in the pilot stage causes forced vibration of the flapper, and its deviation will directly influence the control pressure difference, which will make the pressure appear unstable. In order to grasp the principle and characteristics of transient flow force and its influence on pressure stability, a mathematical model of flapper displacement and control pressure is derived. For collecting the dynamic changes of the transient flow force and recording the motion behavior of the flapper, a three-dimensional model of the pilot-stage is established. Numerical simulations of turbulence phenomenon analysis are conducted with a variation of flapper displacement ranging from 5 &mu;m to 20 &mu;m. It can be concluded that the change trend of the flapper displacement is similar to the steady-state flow force and the transient flow force pulsation amplitude. Under the same structural parameters, the pulsating frequency of the flow force remains basically constant. The fluctuation of the flow force of the pilot stage will cause the pressure of the servo valve control cavity to vibrate to a certain extent, which is a factor that cannot be ignored that affects the output stability of the servo valve

    Set-based design rules and implementation methods in concept development phase

    No full text
    Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 52).There are numerous methodologies that organizations employ during concept development cycles. These range from agile, waterfall, point-based designs etc. One of the emerging such methodologies is called Set-Based Design (SBD). There has been flurry of research conducted into SBD process. Most of the documentations about SBD highlight its general principles and characteristics. In this thesis, I have taken a more focused approach by targeting planning and concept development phases in particular. Rules to select or deselect concepts have been extensively discussed in this research followed by providing an effective structure to implement SBD in concept development process. The form and function distinction during the concept development cycle has been clearly examined and documented. The research has been conducted independent of any organization or product type and therefore is applicable to any product development scenario and can be easily adopted by any organization.by Muhammad Farzan Tariq.S.M. in Engineering and Managemen

    Motor imagery BCI classification based on novel two-dimensional modelling in empirical wavelet transform

    No full text
    Brain complexity and non-stationary nature of electroencephalography (EEG) signal make considerable challenges for the accurate identification of different motor-imagery (MI) tasks in brain–computer interface (BCI). In the proposed Letter, a novel framework is proposed for the automated accurate classification of MI tasks. First, raw EEG signals are denoised with multiscale principal component analysis. Secondly, denoised signals are decomposed by empirical wavelet transform into different modes. Thirdly, the two-dimensional (2D) modelling of modes is introduced to identify the variations of different signals. Fourthly, a single geometrical feature name as, a summation of distance from each point relative to a coordinate centre is extracted from 2D modelling of modes. Finally, the extracted feature vectors are provided to the feedforward neural network and cascade forward neural networks for classification check. The proposed study achieved 95.3% of total classification accuracy with 100% outcome for subject with very small training samples, which is outperforming existing methods on the same database

    A New Framework for Automatic Detection of Motor and Mental Imagery EEG Signals for Robust BCI Systems

    No full text
    Nonstationary signal decomposition (SD) is a primary procedure to extract monotonic components or modes from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for the development of robust brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. This study proposes a novel automated computerized framework for proficient identification of motor and mental imagery (MeI) EEG tasks by employing empirical Fourier decomposition (EFD) and improved EFD (IEFD) methods. Specifically, the multiscale principal component analysis (MSPCA) is rendered to denoise EEG data first, and then, EFD is utilized to decompose nonstationary EEG into subsequent modes, while the IEFD criterion is proposed for a single conspicuous mode selection. Finally, the time- and frequency-domain features are extracted and classified with a feedforward neural network (FFNN) classifier. Extensive experiments are conducted on four multichannel motor and MeI data sets from BCI competitions II and III using a tenfold cross-validation strategy. Results compared with the other existing methods demonstrated that the highest classification accuracies of 99.82% (data set IV-a), 93.33% (data set IV-b), 91.96% (data set III), and 88.08% (data set V) in subject-specific scenarios, while 82.70% (data set IV-a) in the subject-independent framework are achieved for IEFD with FFNN classifiers collectively. The overall exploratory results authenticate that the proposed IEFD-based automated computerized framework not only outperforms the conventional SD methods but is also robust and computationally efficient for the development of subject-dependent and subject-independent BCI systems
    corecore