Optimization and design of a cable driven upper arm exoskeleton

This paper presents the design of a wearable upper arm exoskeleton that can be used to assist and train arm movements of stroke survivors or subjects with weak musculature. In the last ten years, a number of upper-arm training devices have emerged. However, due to their size and weight, their use is restricted to clinics and research laboratories. Our proposed wearable exoskeleton builds upon our extensive research experience in wire driven manipulators and design of rehabilitative systems. The exoskeleton consists of three main parts: (i) an inverted U-shaped cuff that rests on the shoulder, (ii) a cuff on the upper arm, and (iii) a cuff on the forearm. Six motors, mounted on the shoulder cuff, drive the cuffs on the upper arm and forearm, using cables. In order to assess the performance of this exoskeleton, prior to use on humans, a laboratory test-bed has been developed where this exoskeleton is mounted on a model skeleton, instrumented with sensors to measure joint angles and transmitted forces to the shoulder. This paper describes design details of the exoskeleton and addresses the key issue of parameter optimization to achieve useful workspace based on kinematic and kinetic models.</jats:p

Temperature dependence of volume and surface symmetry energy coefficients of nuclei

AbstractThe thermal evolution of the energies and free energies of a set of spherical and near-spherical nuclei spanning the whole periodic table are calculated in the subtracted finite-temperature Thomas–Fermi framework with the zero-range Skyrme-type KDE0 and the finite-range modified Seyler–Blanchard interaction. The calculated energies are subjected to a global fit in the spirit of the liquid-drop model. The extracted parameters in this model reflect the temperature dependence of the volume symmetry and surface symmetry coefficients of finite nuclei, in addition to that of the volume and surface energy coefficients. The temperature dependence of the surface symmetry energy is found to be very substantial whereas that of the volume symmetry energy turns out to be comparatively mild

Moving towards a control technique to help small firms monitor and control key marketing parameters: a survival aid

This article considers that one way to help the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) to survive is to offer it a robust but simple monitoring and control technique that would help it manage the business effectively and this, in turn, should help to increase its chances of survival. This technique should also be of interest to all people involved with monitoring or advising a large number of small enterprises or business units within a larger organization. For example, a bank manager or a small business consultant responsible for a portfolio of firms. The authors utilize process control techniques more often used in production and inventory control systems to demonstrate how one might monitor the marketing ``health'' of small firms

Interaction of mycobacterium tuberculosis rsha and sigh is mediated by salt bridges

10.1371/journal.pone.0043676PLoS ONE78

Neutrino hierarchy from CP-blind observables with high density magnetized detectors

High density magnetized detectors are well suited to exploit the outstanding purity and intensities of novel neutrino sources like Neutrino Factories and Beta Beams. They can also provide independent measurements of leptonic mixing parameters through the observation of atmospheric muon-neutrinos. In this paper, we discuss the combination of these observables from a multi-kton iron detector and a high energy Beta Beam; in particular, we demonstrate that even with moderate detector granularities the neutrino mass hierarchy can be determined for $\theta_{13}$ values greater than 4$^\circ$.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. Added a new section discussing systematic errors (sec 5.2); sec.5.1 and 4 have been extended. Version to appear in EPJ

Predicting User-Cell Association in Cellular Networks from Tracked Data

We consider the problem of predicting user location in the form of user-cell association in a cellular wireless network. This is motivated by resource optimization, for example switching base transceiver stations on or off to save on network energy consumption. We use GSM traces obtained from an operator, and compare several prediction methods. First, we find that, on our trace data, user cell sector association can be correctly predicted in ca. 80% of the cases. Second, we propose a new method, called “MARPL”, which uses Market Basket Analysis to separate patterns where prediction by partial match (PPM) works well from those where repetition of the last known location (LAST) is best. Third, we propose that for network resource optimization, predicting the aggregate location of a user ensemble may be of more interest than separate predictions for all users; this motivates us to develop soft prediction methods, where the prediction is a spatial probability distribution rather than the most likely location. Last, we compare soft predictions methods to a classical time and space analysis (ISTAR). In terms of relative mean square error, MARPL with soft prediction and ISTAR perform better than all other methods, with a slight advantage to MARPL (but the numerical complexity of MARPL is much less than ISTAR)