Human Arm simulation for interactive constrained environment design

During the conceptual and prototype design stage of an industrial product, it is crucial to take assembly/disassembly and maintenance operations in advance. A well-designed system should enable relatively easy access of operating manipulators in the constrained environment and reduce musculoskeletal disorder risks for those manual handling operations. Trajectory planning comes up as an important issue for those assembly and maintenance operations under a constrained environment, since it determines the accessibility and the other ergonomics issues, such as muscle effort and its related fatigue. In this paper, a customer-oriented interactive approach is proposed to partially solve ergonomic related issues encountered during the design stage under a constrained system for the operator's convenience. Based on a single objective optimization method, trajectory planning for different operators could be generated automatically. Meanwhile, a motion capture based method assists the operator to guide the trajectory planning interactively when either a local minimum is encountered within the single objective optimization or the operator prefers guiding the virtual human manually. Besides that, a physical engine is integrated into this approach to provide physically realistic simulation in real time manner, so that collision free path and related dynamic information could be computed to determine further muscle fatigue and accessibility of a product designComment: International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM) (2012) 1-12. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1012.432

Muscle Fatigue Analysis Using OpenSim

In this research, attempts are made to conduct concrete muscle fatigue analysis of arbitrary motions on OpenSim, a digital human modeling platform. A plug-in is written on the base of a muscle fatigue model, which makes it possible to calculate the decline of force-output capability of each muscle along time. The plug-in is tested on a three-dimensional, 29 degree-of-freedom human model. Motion data is obtained by motion capturing during an arbitrary running at a speed of 3.96 m/s. Ten muscles are selected for concrete analysis. As a result, the force-output capability of these muscles reduced to 60%-70% after 10 minutes' running, on a general basis. Erector spinae, which loses 39.2% of its maximal capability, is found to be more fatigue-exposed than the others. The influence of subject attributes (fatigability) is evaluated and discussed

Solid-state interdiffusion reactions in Ni/Ti and Ni/Zr multilayered thin films

We have performed a comparative transmission electron microscopy study of solid-state interdiffusion reactions in multilayered Ni/Zr and Ni/Ti thin films. The Ni-Zr reaction product was amorphous while the Ni-Ti reaction product was a simple intermetallic compound. Because thermodynamic and chemical properties of these two alloy systems are similar, we suggest kinetic origins for this difference in reaction product

Assessment of hearing status in children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate in China

Poster SessionConference Theme: Making Hearing Health a Global PriorityNon-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P) is a common congenital craniofacial malformation worldwide, and there are a large number of babies born with CL/P every year in China. Children with NSCL/P often have a high prevalence of middle ear disorder because of Eustachian tube dysfunction. However, the degree of possible conductive hearing loss and distribution of affected frequencies of pure tone test thresholds in school age children with NSCL/P have been rarely reported in China or other developing countries. In addition to peripheral hearing loss, children with NSCL/P may have a higher than typical prevalence of (central) auditory processing disorder [(C)APD] reflected in their poor academic performance and delayed speech or language development. This study aimed to use a medical history ...postprin

Electrophysiologic assessment of (central) auditory processing disorder in children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate

Session 5aPP - Psychological and Physiological Acoustics: Auditory Function, Mechanisms, and Models (Poster Session)Cleft of the lip and/or palate is a common congenital craniofacial malformation worldwide, particularly non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P). Though middle ear deficits in this population have been universally noted in numerous studies, other auditory problems including inner ear deficits or cortical dysfunction are rarely reported. A higher prevalence of educational problems has been noted in children with NSCL/P compared to craniofacially normal children. These high level cognitive difficulties cannot be entirely attributed to peripheral hearing loss. Recently it has been suggested that children with NSCLP may be more prone to abnormalities in the auditory cortex. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether school age children with (NSCL/P) have a higher prevalence of indications of (central) auditory processing disorder [(C)APD] compared to normal age matched controls when assessed using auditory event-related potential (ERP) techniques. School children (6 to 15 years) with NSCL/P and normal controls with matched age and gender were recruited. Auditory ERP recordings included auditory brainstem response and late event-related potentials, including the P1-N1-P2 complex and P300 waveforms. Initial findings from the present study are presented and their implications for further research in this area —and clinical intervention—are outlined. © 2012 Acoustical Society of Americapublished_or_final_versio

Melosh rotation: source of the proton's missing spin

It is shown that the observed small value of the integrated spin structure function for protons could be naturally understood within the naive quark model by considering the effect from Melosh rotation. The key to this problem lies in the fact that the deep inelastic process probes the light-cone quarks rather than the instant-form quarks, and that the spin of the proton is the sum of the Melosh rotated light-cone spin of the individual quarks rather than simply the sum of the light-cone spin of the quarks directly.Comment: 5 latex page

Nonlinear Dynamics in the Resonance Lineshape of NbN Superconducting Resonators

In this work we report on unusual nonlinear dynamics measured in the resonance response of NbN superconducting microwave resonators. The nonlinear dynamics, occurring at relatively low input powers (2-4 orders of magnitude lower than Nb), and which include among others, jumps in the resonance lineshape, hysteresis loops changing direction and resonance frequency shift, are measured herein using varying input power, applied magnetic field, white noise and rapid frequency sweeps. Based on these measurement results, we consider a hypothesis according to which local heating of weak links forming at the boundaries of the NbN grains are responsible for the observed behavior, and we show that most of the experimental results are qualitatively consistent with such hypothesis.Comment: Updated version (of cond-mat/0504582), 16 figure