AEVUM: Personalized Health Monitoring System

Advancement in the field of sensors and other portable technologies have resulted in a bevy of health monitoring devices such as blue-tooth and Wi-Fi enabled weighing scales and wearables which help individuals monitor their personal health. This collected information provides a plethora of data points over intervals of time that a primary care physician can utilize to gain a holistic understanding of an individual’s health and provide a more effective and personalized treatment. A drawback of the existing health monitoring devices is that they are not integrated with the professional medical infrastructure. With the wealth of information collected, it is also not feasible for a physician to look through all the data to obtain relevant information or patterns from multiple health monitoring systems. Therefore, it would be beneficial to have a single platform of hardware devices to monitor and collect data and a software application to securely store the collected information, identify patterns for analysis, and summarize the data for the physician and the patient. The aim of this study was to design and develop an unobtrusive, user friendly system, Aevum, which would integrate technology, adapt itself to changes in consumer behavior and integrate with the existing healthcare infrastructure to help an individual monitor their health in a customized manner. Aevum is a multi-device system consisting of a smart, puck-shaped hardware product, a wristband and a software application available to the patient as well as the physician. In addition to monitoring vitals such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and weight, Aevum can monitor environmental factors that affect an individual’s health and uses personalized metrics such as precise calorie intake and medication management to monitor health. This allows the user to personalize Aevum based on their health condition. Finally, Aevum identifies patterns of anomalies in the collected data and compiles the information which can be accessed by the physician to assist in their treatment

MEMS Technology for Biomedical Imaging Applications

Biomedical imaging is the key technique and process to create informative images of the human body or other organic structures for clinical purposes or medical science. Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology has demonstrated enormous potential in biomedical imaging applications due to its outstanding advantages of, for instance, miniaturization, high speed, higher resolution, and convenience of batch fabrication. There are many advancements and breakthroughs developing in the academic community, and there are a few challenges raised accordingly upon the designs, structures, fabrication, integration, and applications of MEMS for all kinds of biomedical imaging. This Special Issue aims to collate and showcase research papers, short commutations, perspectives, and insightful review articles from esteemed colleagues that demonstrate: (1) original works on the topic of MEMS components or devices based on various kinds of mechanisms for biomedical imaging; and (2) new developments and potentials of applying MEMS technology of any kind in biomedical imaging. The objective of this special session is to provide insightful information regarding the technological advancements for the researchers in the community

Program Annual Technology Report: Cosmic Origins Program Office

What is the Cosmic Origins (COR) Program? From ancient times, humans have looked up at the night sky and wondered: Are we alone? How did the universe come to be? How does the universe work? COR focuses on the second question. Scientists investigating this broad theme seek to understand the origin and evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to the present day, determining how the expanding universe grew into a grand cosmic web of dark matter enmeshed with galaxies and pristine gas, forming, merging, and evolving over time. COR also seeks to understand how stars and planets form from clouds in these galaxies to create the heavy elements that are essential to life, starting with the first generation of stars to seed the universe, and continuing through the birth and eventual death of all subsequent generations of stars. The COR Programs purview includes the majority of the field known as astronomy

Application-Specific Things Architectures for IoT-Based Smart Healthcare Solutions

Human body is a complex system organized at different levels such as cells, tissues and organs, which contributes to 11 important organ systems. The functional efficiency of this complex system is evaluated as health. Traditional healthcare is unable to accommodate everyone's need due to the ever-increasing population and medical costs. With advancements in technology and medical research, traditional healthcare applications are shaping into smart healthcare solutions. Smart healthcare helps in continuously monitoring our body parameters, which helps in keeping people health-aware. It provides the ability for remote assistance, which helps in utilizing the available resources to maximum potential. The backbone of smart healthcare solutions is Internet of Things (IoT) which increases the computing capacity of the real-world components by using cloud-based solutions. The basic elements of these IoT based smart healthcare solutions are called "things." Things are simple sensors or actuators, which have the capacity to wirelessly connect with each other and to the internet. The research for this dissertation aims in developing architectures for these things, focusing on IoT-based smart healthcare solutions. The core for this dissertation is to contribute to the research in smart healthcare by identifying applications which can be monitored remotely. For this, application-specific thing architectures were proposed based on monitoring a specific body parameter; monitoring physical health for family and friends; and optimizing the power budget of IoT body sensor network using human body communications. The experimental results show promising scope towards improving the quality of life, through needle-less and cost-effective smart healthcare solutions

Creation of a control system for plasma delivery to increase automation and stability.

Surface figuring of extremely large telescopes (ELT) addresses a highly challenging manufacture issue for the field of ultra precision. [1] High form accuracy and rapid fabrication are needed for ELT primary mirror surface figuring. In Cranfield University, Plasma Figuring (PF) [2] is used as a main method to correct ELT mirror surface figure error. The non-contact based material removal process brings PF to a high level of accuracy (under 1nm RMS level). Some other great features of PF are the capability to work at atmospheric pressure, the low-cost of consumables. Other figuring methods make use of vacuum chamber (ion beam Figuring) which are expensive. On the other hand magnetorheological finishing requires expensive consumables. Although PF is dominant for the surface correction of metre scale surfaces, challenges still exist to improve the automation and stabilization of the plasma source. In the context of ever-increasing dimensions of optical components, there is a need for improving the robustness and securing the performance of the unique Plasma Delivery System (PDS) available in Cranfield. The current PDS is based on an inductive output L-type radio frequency (RF) circuit, Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) torch and computer numerically controlled (CNC) motion system. The combination of optical component surface dimensions and the material removal rate of the plasma jet lead to significant processing duration. Based on the existing PDS for our unique Plasma Figuring machine named Helios1200, we designed an enhanced PDS version. The novel design was given the capability to detect phases and automatically tune the impedance of the plasma. The novel control capability is aiming at secure the process determinism, assisting the machine operator by tuning key electrical components of the RF network and monitoring crucial processing parameters. Furthermore, specific assistances were provided during the three identified processing phases (ignition phase, regular operation and critical circumstance) of the plasma processing. Our design addressed particular functions on each phases to ensure an optimum performance during the Plasma Figuring process.MSc by Research in Manufacturin