Non-invasive detection of animal nerve impulses with an atomic magnetometer operating near quantum limited sensitivity

Magnetic fields generated by human and animal organs, such as the heart, brain and nervous system carry information useful for biological and medical purposes. These magnetic fields are most commonly detected using cryogenically-cooled superconducting magnetometers. Here we present the frst detection of action potentials from an animal nerve using an optical atomic magnetometer. Using an optimal design we are able to achieve the sensitivity dominated by the quantum shot noise of light and quantum projection noise of atomic spins. Such sensitivity allows us to measure the nerve impulse with a miniature room-temperature sensor which is a critical advantage for biomedical applications. Positioning the sensor at a distance of a few millimeters from the nerve, corresponding to the distance between the skin and nerves in biological studies, we detect the magnetic field generated by an action potential of a frog sciatic nerve. From the magnetic field measurements we determine the activity of the nerve and the temporal shape of the nerve impulse. This work opens new ways towards implementing optical magnetometers as practical devices for medical diagnostics.Comment: Main text with figures, and methods and supplementary informatio

Assisting Professional Development of Subordinate Engineers; Evidence from Owner/Manager Entrepreneurial Engineers in Sri Lanka

Many innovative-minded engineers have stepped towards the business domain as entrepreneurs in the international context and in the Sri Lankan context. Most entrepreneurial engineers have exploited technology-related business opportunities and succeeded in their entrepreneurial journey while contributing immensely to the economic development of the country. Although these engineers play the role of a business leader, they are professionally qualified engineers. Hence, they cannot neglect Engineering Ethics and perform as pure business managers in their entrepreneurial firms. The Code of Engineering Ethics applicable to Sri Lanka advises local engineers to actively assist and encourage the subordinate engineers to advance knowledge and experience. Therefore, Sri Lankan entrepreneurial engineers have an ethical responsibility to support the professional development of subordinate engineers. Both fields of entrepreneurship and ethics of engineers lack systematic studies in Sri Lanka. Thus, the authors were involved in an ongoing grounded theory-based qualitative study on entrepreneurial engineers' ethical practices in Sri Lanka. Based on the findings of that study, this paper investigates the strategies followed by Sri Lankan owner/manager entrepreneurial engineers on the professional development of their subordinate engineers. A purposively and theoretically selected sample of twelve entrepreneurial engineers was interviewed face to face to collect data. Interviews were voice recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interview transcripts were analyzed employing grounded theory techniques to achieve this study's objective with the NVivo software's support. The study reveals that Engineering Ethics' influence has compelled entrepreneurial engineers to follow various employee development strategies. As highlighted in their interviews, training, teaching, coaching & mentoring are the major categories of procedures followed by entrepreneurial engineers in Sri Lanka. This study's findings can be considered as guidance for emerging and future entrepreneurial engineers to create a mutually beneficial sustainable work environment for entrepreneurial engineers and their employees while achieving business success.          KEYWORDS:     Entrepreneurial Engineers, Professional Development, Sri Lanka, Subordinates &nbsp

The emergence of optical elastography in biomedicine

The authors thank their colleagues past and present who have contributed to the evolution of optical elastography; in particular, S. Adie, W. Allen, L. Chin, B. Quirk, A. Curatolo, S. Es'hagian, K. Kennedy, R. Kirk, R. McLaughlin and P. Munro. This work has been supported in part by the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and the Western Australian Department of Health. P.W. thanks the Schrader Trust for a studentship.Optical elastography, the use of optics to characterize and map the mechanical properties of biological tissue, involves measuring the deformation of tissue in response to a load. Such measurements may be used to form an image of a mechanical property, often elastic modulus, with the resulting mechanical contrast complementary to the more familiar optical contrast. Optical elastography is experiencing new impetus in response to developments in the closely related fields of cell mechanics and medical imaging, aided by advances in photonics technology, and through probing the microscale between that of cells and whole tissues. Two techniques-optical coherence elastography and Brillouin microscopy-have recently shown particular promise for medical applications, such as in ophthalmology and oncology, and as new techniques in cell mechanics.PostprintPeer reviewe

A Principled Hierarchical Deep Learning Approach to Joint Image Compression and Classification

Among applications of deep learning (DL) involving low cost sensors, remote image classification involves a physical channel that separates edge sensors and cloud classifiers. Traditional DL models must be divided between an encoder for the sensor and the decoder + classifier at the edge server. An important challenge is to effectively train such distributed models when the connecting channels have limited rate/capacity. Our goal is to optimize DL models such that the encoder latent requires low channel bandwidth while still delivers feature information for high classification accuracy. This work proposes a three-step joint learning strategy to guide encoders to extract features that are compact, discriminative, and amenable to common augmentations/transformations. We optimize latent dimension through an initial screening phase before end-to-end (E2E) training. To obtain an adjustable bit rate via a single pre-deployed encoder, we apply entropy-based quantization and/or manual truncation on the latent representations. Tests show that our proposed method achieves accuracy improvement of up to 1.5% on CIFAR-10 and 3% on CIFAR-100 over conventional E2E cross-entropy training

Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural and food systems in Badulla District, Sri Lanka

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Usability of “iCollege” Learning Management System in University Environment

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand in integrating new technologies into educational procedures. The Learning Management System (LMS), a web-based educational technology, helps teachers meet their pedagogical objectives, organize course materials, and support students. Learning Management Software (LMS) has been implemented in many universities across the world to assist link faculty and students outside of the classroom setting. It is a digital environment that allows the efficient distribution of academic materials, Easy access to information, instant access to up-to-date content, maintain a library virtually and enhanced communication through a single location. The main scope of developing this Learning Management System is to resolve above-described features and address many issues in the Academic process and content deliverables. The software solution has been implemented by addressing each requirement of administrators, Students, and Lecturers following each phase of the software life cycle in order to provide real time operations and advanced functions for the web based LMS syste

An Integrated Management System for a Medical Center

Recently, the use of technology in medicine and healthcare has increased, particularly during the pandemic period. This adaptation has shown to be fruitful in many scenarios. Implementing a computerized system to manage daily tasks like handling patient records, appointments and other administrative tasks can result in an efficient system. This will in turn result in a better experience for the patients as well as the staff members. This research paper documents the development process of creating an online web application for an existing manual medical center management system. The previous system made simple and frequent tasks like retrieving laboratory results or checking a doctor’s appointment a time-consuming hassle. Further, the requirement of a digitized system to track the medical staff was evident as many incorrect appointments and patient records were detected. This proposed system provides the benefits of appointment management, laboratory management, staff management, payment management. This solution makes it easier to check staff profiles and schedule appointments for patients, preventing making an appointment for a doctor on a day. Additionally, the laboratory division may post reports and this system manages all the patient payment details. The proposed system's functionalities will next be discussed, along with the testing methodologies and outcomes

Ultrasound morphology of carotid plaque and its link with lipid: protein content and 3d microstructure of the plaque.

the 22nd Meeting of the European Society of Neurosonology and Cerebral Hemodynamics (ESNCH), 19-21 May 2017. Berlin, Germany, and published in the International Journal of Stroke 12(1S): 57 (Poster 101), May 2017. ISSN: 1747-4930, eISSN: 1747-4949

Solar Radiation Alters Toxicity of Carbofuran: Evidence from Empirical Trials with Duttaphyrnus melanostictus

In the present study we investigated the potential of natural solar radiation to alter the toxicity of a commonly used carbamate pesticide, carbofuran, on tadpoles of the Common Asian Toad Duttaphrynus melanostictus. A single exposure trial was conducted over 96 hrs with three concentrations (150, 250 and 500 µgl-1) of photo-irradiated and non-irradiated carbofuran. Results show that photo-irradiation markedly reduced the toxicity of carbofuran as evident by its effects on three end points, i.e. mortality, growth and swimming activity. The mortality of tadpoles exposed to irradiated carbofuran was significantly lower than those exposed to the non-irradiated pesticide. Both treatment and control tadpoles showed a hormetic response for mortality. Tadpoles in irradiated tanks were also larger and more active than those in the control tanks. Photo-altered toxicity was evident at all three tested concentrations. The results of this study therefore signals caution when directly linking  results of empirical trials to field scenarios and highlight the necessity to evaluate toxic effects of compounds under variable environmental conditions.Keywords: Carbofuran, Duttaphrynus melanostictus, photo-degradation, tadpoles, toxicit

Metabolic Modulation Predicts Heart Failure Tests Performance

The metabolic changes that accompany changes in Cardiopulmonary testing (CPET) and heart failure biomarkers (HFbio) are not well known. We undertook metabolomic and lipidomic phenotyping of a cohort of heart failure (HF) patients and utilized Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) to identify associations to CPET and HFBio test performance (peak oxygen consumption (Peak VO2), oxygen uptake efficiency slope (OUES), exercise duration, and minute ventilation-carbon dioxide production slope (VE/VCO2 slope), as well as the established HF biomarkers of inflammation C-reactive protein (CRP), beta-galactoside-binding protein (galectin-3), and N-terminal prohormone of brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP)). A cohort of 49 patients with a left ventricular ejection fraction \u3c 50%, predominantly males African American, presenting a high frequency of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension were used in the study. MRA revealed that metabolic models for VE/VCO2 and Peak VO2 were the most fitted models, and the highest predictors’ coefficients were from Acylcarnitine C18:2, palmitic acid, citric acid, asparagine, and 3-hydroxybutiric acid. Metabolic Pathway Analysis (MetPA) used predictors to identify the most relevant metabolic pathways associated to the study, aminoacyl-tRNA and amino acid biosynthesis, amino acid metabolism, nitrogen metabolism, pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis, sphingolipid and glycerolipid metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, glutathione metabolism, and pentose phosphate pathway (PPP). Metabolite Set Enrichment Analysis (MSEA) found associations of our findings with pre-existing biological knowledge from studies of human plasma metabolism as brain dysfunction and enzyme deficiencies associated with lactic acidosis. Our results indicate a profile of oxidative stress, lactic acidosis, and metabolic syndrome coupled with mitochondria dysfunction in patients with HF tests poor performance. The insights resulting from this study coincides with what has previously been discussed in existing literature thereby supporting the validity of our findings while at the same time characterizing the metabolic underpinning of CPET and HFBio