Review on Smart Electro-Clothing Systems (SeCSs)

This review paper presents an overview of the smart electro-clothing systems (SeCSs) targeted at health monitoring, sports benefits, fitness tracking, and social activities. Technical features of the available SeCSs, covering both textile and electronic components, are thoroughly discussed and their applications in the industry and research purposes are highlighted. In addition, it also presents the developments in the associated areas of wearable sensor systems and textile-based dry sensors. As became evident during the literature research, such a review on SeCSs covering all relevant issues has not been presented before. This paper will be particularly helpful for new generation researchers who are and will be investigating the design, development, function, and comforts of the sensor integrated clothing materials

Non-invasive Electronic Biosensor Circuits and Systems

An aging population has lead to increased demand for health-care and an interest in moving health care services from the hospital to the home to reduce the burden on society. One enabling technology is comfortable monitoring and sensing of bio-signals. Sensors can be embedded in objects that people interact with daily such as a computer, chair, bed, toilet, car, telephone or any portable personal electronic device. Moreover, the relatively recent and wide availability of microelectronics that provide the capabilities of embedded software, open access wireless protocols and long battery life has led many research groups to develop wearable, wireless bio-sensor systems that are worn on the body and integrated into clothing. These systems are capable of interaction with other devices that are nowadays commonly in our possession such as a mobile phone, laptop, PDA or smart multifunctional MP3 player. The development of systems for wireless bio-medical long term monitoring is leading to personal monitoring, not just for medical reasons, but also for enhancing personal awareness and monitoring self-performance, as with sports-monitoring for athletes. These developments also provide a foundation for the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that aims to directly monitor brain signals in order to control or manipulate external objects. This provides a new communication channel to the brain that does not require activation of muscles and nerves. This innovative and exciting research field is in need of reliable and easy to use long term recording systems (EEG). In particular we highlight the development and broad applications of our own circuits for wearable bio-potential sensor systems enabled by the use of an amplifier circuit with sufficiently high impedance to allow the use of passive dry electrodes which overcome the significant barrier of gel based contacts

A Bootstrap Approach to an Affordable Exploration Program

This paper examines the potential to build an affordable sustainable exploration program by adopting an approach that requires investing in technologies that can be used to build a space infrastructure from very modest initial capabilities. Human exploration has had a history of flight programs that have high development and operational costs. Since Apollo, human exploration has had very constrained budgets and they are expected be constrained in the future. Due to their high operations costs it becomes necessary to consider retiring established space facilities in order to move on to the next exploration challenge. This practice may save cost in the near term but it does so by sacrificing part of the program s future architecture. Human exploration also has a history of sacrificing fully functional flight hardware to achieve mission objectives. An affordable exploration program cannot be built when it involves billions of dollars of discarded space flight hardware, instead, the program must emphasize preserving its high value space assets and building a suitable permanent infrastructure. Further this infrastructure must reduce operational and logistics cost. The paper examines the importance of achieving a high level of logistics independence by minimizing resource consumption, minimizing the dependency on external logistics, and maximizing the utility of resources available. The approach involves the development and deployment of a core suite of technologies that have minimum initial needs yet are able expand upon initial capability in an incremental bootstrap fashion. The bootstrap approach incrementally creates an infrastructure that grows and becomes self sustaining and eventually begins producing the energy, products and consumable propellants that support human exploration. The bootstrap technologies involve new methods of delivering and manipulating energy and materials. These technologies will exploit the space environment, minimize dependencies, and minimize the need for imported resources. They will provide the widest range of utility in a resource scarce environment and pave the way to an affordable exploration program

Real Time Control for Intelligent 6G Networks

The benefits of telemetry for optical networking have been shown in the literature, and several telemetry architectures have been defined. In general, telemetry data is collected from observation points in the devices and sent to a central system running besides the Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller. In this project, we try to develop a telemetry architecture that supports intelligent data aggregation and nearby data collection. Several frameworks and technologies have been explored to ensure that they fit well into the architecture's composition. A description of these different technologies is presented in this work, along with a comparison between their main features and downsides. Some intelligent techniques, aka. Algorithms have been stated and tested within architecture, showing their benefits by reducing the amount of data processed. In the design of this architecture, the main issues related to distributed systems have been faced, and some initial solutions have been proposed. In particular, several security solutions have been explored to deal with threats but also with scalability and performance issues, trying to find a balance between performance and security. Finally, two use cases are presented, showing a real implementation of the architecture that has been presented at conferences and validated within the project's development

A Proposed Equipment Development Plan for Closed Circuit Television as it Relates to the Existing Curriculum at College of Southern Utah

A study of closed circuit television systems was made which could be utilized t o supplement conventional teaching methods at College of Southern Utah. A basic, but complete studio installation for production work and radio-television class room instruction in addition to four, individual, self-contained installations a re recommended f or regular classroom use. All equipment is to be compatible and provide for complete interchangeability of tapes within the system. Present costs of distribution systems indicate that video t apes produced in the classroom, in the field, or in the studio and played back in the class room would provide better utilization of available funds. It is recommended, however, that all future buildings be cabled with coaxial cable for closed circuit television distribution. This form would be less costly and more versatile than microwave distribution. Included are recommendations of presently available, commercial equipment that satisfy the indicated needs

Southwest Research Institute assistance to NASA in biomedical areas of the technology utilization program

The activities are reported of the NASA Biomedical Applications Team at Southwest Research Institute between 25 August, 1972 and 15 November, 1973. The program background and methodology are discussed along with the technology applications, and biomedical community impacts

NASA Tech Briefs, July 1999

Topics: Test and Measurement; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Software; Mechanics; Machinery/Automation; Bio-Medical; Books and Reports; Semiconductors/ICs

Smart Healthcare solutions in China and Europe, an international business perspective

The thesis is part of the Marie Curie Fellowship project addressing health related challenges with IoT solutions. The author tries to address the challenge for the implementation of telehealth solutions by finding out the demand of the telehealth solution in selected European economies and in China (chapter 1), analyzing the emerging business models for telehealth solution ecosystems in China (chapter 2), how to integrate telehealth solutions with institutional stakeholders (chapter 3) and why are elderly users willing to use telehealth solutions in China. Chapter 1 and chapter 2 form the theoretical background for empirical work in chapter 3 and chapter 4. The thesis addressed four research questions, namely “Which societal and social-economics unmet needs that Internet of Healthcare Things can help to resolve?”, “What are the business model innovation for tech companies in China for the smart health industry?”, “What are the facilitators and hurdles for implementing telehealth solutions”, “Are elderly users willing to use telehealth solutions in China?”. Both qualitative study and quantitative analysis has been made based on data collected by in depth interviews with stakeholders, focus group study work with urban and rural residents in China. The digital platform framework was used in chapter 2 as the theoretical framework where as the stakeholder power mapping framework was used in chapter 3. The discretion choice experiment was used in chapter 4 to design questionnaire study while ordered logit regression was used to analyze the data. Telehealth solutions have great potential to fill in the gap for lack of community healthcare and ensuring health continuity between home care setting, community healthcare and hospitals. There is strong demand for such solutions if they can prove the medical value in managing chronic disease by raising health awareness and lowering health risks by changing the patients’ lifestyle. Analyzing how to realize the value for preventive healthcare by proving the health-economic value of digital health solutions (telehealth solutions) is the focus of research. There remain hurdles to build trust for telehealth solutions and the use of AI in healthcare. Next step of research can also be extended to addressing such challenges by analyzing how to improve the transparency of algorithms by disclosing the data source, and how the algorithms were built. Further research can be done on data interoperability between the EHR systems and telehealth solutions. The medical value of telehealth solutions can improve if doctors could interpret data collected from telehealth solutions; furthermore, if doctors could make diagnosis and provide treatment, adjust healthcare management plans based on such data, telehealth solutions then can be included in insurance packages, making them more accessible

Research and Technology

Johnson Space Center (JSC) accomplishments in new and advanced concepts during 1989 are highlighted. This year, reports are grouped in sections, Medical Science, Solar System Sciences, Space Transportation Technology, and Space Systems Technology. Summary sections describing the role of JSC in each program are followed by descriptions of significant tasks. Descriptions are suitable for external consumption, free of technical jargon, and illustrated to increase ease of comprehension