Land Assembly for Housing Developments

The ability to identify premature arterial stiffening is of considerable value in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. The “ageing index” (AGI), which is calculated from the second derivative photoplethysmographic (SDPPG) waveform, has been used as one method for arterial stiffness estimation and the evaluation of cardiovascular ageing. In this study, the new SDPPG analysis algorithm is proposed with optimal filtering and signal normalization in time. The filter parameters were optimized in order to achieve the minimal standard deviation of AGI, which gives more effective differentiation between the levels of arterial stiffness. As a result, the optimal low-pass filter edge frequency of 6 Hz and transitionband of 1 Hz were found, which facilitates AGI calculation with a standard deviation of 0.06. The study was carried out on 21 healthy subjects and 20 diabetes patients. The linear relationship (r=0.91) between each subject’s age and AGI was found, and a linear model with regression line was constructed. For diabetes patients, the mean AGI value difference from the proposed model yAGI was found to be 0.359. The difference was found between healthy and diabetes patients groups with significance level of P<0.0005

Experimental investigation of open-ended microwave oven assisted encapsulation process

An open ended microwave oven is presented with improved uniform heating, heating rates and power conversion efficiency. This next generation oven produces more uniform EM fields in the evanescent region forming part of the heating area of the oven. These fields are vital for the rapid and uniform heating of various electromagnetically lossy materials. A fibre optic temperature sensor and an IR pyrometer are used to measure in situ and in real-time the temperature of the curing materials. An automatic computer controlled closed feedback loop measures the temperature in the curing material and drives the microwave components to obtain predetermined curing temperature cycles for efficient curing. Uniform curing of the lossy encapsulants is achieved with this oven with typical cure cycle of 270 seconds with a ramp rate of 1oC/s and a hold period of 2 minutes. Differential scanning calorimeter based measurement for the pulsed microwave based curing of the polymer dielectric indicates a ~ 100% degree of cure

Predictive, miniature co-extrusion of multilayered glass fiber-optic preforms

A miniature co-extrusion technique, to produce a concentric multilayered glass fiber-optic preform of ~3 mm diameter, is modeled and experimentally demonstrated. A three-dimensional, incompressible, noncavitating, and nonisothermal Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model, similar to one developed in our previous work, is used to predict the dimensions of an alternating four-layer glass stack feed required to produce the desired layer dimensions in a multilayered-glass preform extrudate, using a miniaturized and thus more economical co-extrusion. Strong agreement in the cross-sectional geometrical proportions of the simulated and experimentally obtained preform supports the prowess of the predictive modeling. Nevertheless, some small deviations between the simulated and experimentally obtained dimensions indicate topics for future rheological study. Performing the co-extrusion process under vacuum helps to minimize the inter-layer defects in the multi-layered fiber-optic preform. The miniature co-extrusion potentially removes the need for a postextrusion draw-down prior to fiber drawing, avoiding devitrification issues possible in non-oxide novel glass compositions

Innovative technologies of waste recycling with production of high performance products

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. The innovative ways of recycling wastes as a tool for sustainable development are presented in the article. The technology of the production of a composite material based on the rubber fiber composite waste tire industry is presented. The results of experimental use of the products in the real conditions. The comparative characteristics of the composite material rubber fiber composite are given. The production technology of construction and repairing materials on the basis of foamed glass is presented

Using the nonlinear control of anaesthesia-induced hypersensitivity of EEG at burst suppression level to test the effects of radiofrequency radiation on brain function

Background In this study, investigating the effects of mobile phone radiation on test animals, eleven pigs were anaesthetised to the level where burst-suppression pattern appears in the electroencephalogram (EEG). At this level of anaesthesia both human subjects and animals show high sensitivity to external stimuli which produce EEG bursts during suppression. The burst-suppression phenomenon represents a nonlinear control system, where low-amplitude EEG abruptly switches to very high amplitude bursts. This switching can be triggered by very minor stimuli and the phenomenon has been described as hypersensitivity. To test if also radio frequency (RF) stimulation can trigger this nonlinear control, the animals were exposed to pulse modulated signal of a GSM mobile phone at 890 MHz. In the first phase of the experiment electromagnetic field (EMF) stimulation was randomly switched on and off and the relation between EEG bursts and EMF stimulation onsets and endpoints were studied. In the second phase a continuous RF stimulation at 31 W/kg was applied for 10 minutes. The ECG, the EEG, and the subcutaneous temperature were recorded. Results No correlation between the exposure and the EEG burst occurrences was observed in phase I measurements. No significant changes were observed in the EEG activity of the pigs during phase II measurements although several EEG signal analysis methods were applied. The temperature measured subcutaneously from the pigs' head increased by 1.6°C and the heart rate by 14.2 bpm on the average during the 10 min exposure periods. Conclusion The hypothesis that RF radiation would produce sensory stimulation of somatosensory, auditory or visual system or directly affect the brain so as to produce EEG bursts during suppression was not confirmed.BioMed Central Open acces

Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin

What is the level of consciousness of the psychedelic state? Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity such as entropy and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity score higher for wakeful rest than for states with lower conscious level like propofol-induced anesthesia. Here we compute these measures for spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousness induced by three psychedelic substances: psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. For all three, we find reliably higher spontaneous signal diversity, even when controlling for spectral changes. This increase is most pronounced for the single-channel LZ complexity measure, and hence for temporal, as opposed to spatial, signal diversity. We also uncover selective correlations between changes in signal diversity and phenomenological reports of the intensity of psychedelic experience. This is the first time that these measures have been applied to the psychedelic state and, crucially, that they have yielded values exceeding those of normal waking consciousness. These findings suggest that the sustained occurrence of psychedelic phenomenology constitutes an elevated level of consciousness - as measured by neural signal diversity

The correlation between white-matter microstructure and the complexity of spontaneous brain activity: A difussion tensor imaging-MEG study

The advent of new signal processing methods, such as non-linear analysis techniques, represents a new perspective which adds further value to brain signals' analysis. Particularly, Lempel–Ziv's Complexity (LZC) has proven to be useful in exploring the complexity of the brain electromagnetic activity. However, an important problem is the lack of knowledge about the physiological determinants of these measures. Although acorrelation between complexity and connectivity has been proposed, this hypothesis was never tested in vivo. Thus, the correlation between the microstructure of the anatomic connectivity and the functional complexity of the brain needs to be inspected. In this study we analyzed the correlation between LZC and fractional anisotropy (FA), a scalar quantity derived from diffusion tensors that is particularly useful as an estimate of the functional integrity of myelinated axonal fibers, in a group of sixteen healthy adults (all female, mean age 65.56 ± 6.06 years, intervals 58–82). Our results showed a positive correlation between FA and LZC scores in regions including clusters in the splenium of the corpus callosum, cingulum, parahipocampal regions and the sagittal stratum. This study supports the notion of a positive correlation between the functional complexity of the brain and the microstructure of its anatomical connectivity. Our investigation proved that a combination of neuroanatomical and neurophysiological techniques may shed some light on the underlying physiological determinants of brain's oscillation

Brain function assessment in different conscious states

Background: The study of brain functioning is a major challenge in neuroscience fields as human brain has a dynamic and ever changing information processing. Case is worsened with conditions where brain undergoes major changes in so-called different conscious states. Even though the exact definition of consciousness is a hard one, there are certain conditions where the descriptions have reached a consensus. The sleep and the anesthesia are different conditions which are separable from each other and also from wakefulness. The aim of our group has been to tackle the issue of brain functioning with setting up similar research conditions for these three conscious states.Methods: In order to achieve this goal we have designed an auditory stimulation battery with changing conditions to be recorded during a 40 channel EEG polygraph (Nuamps) session. The stimuli (modified mismatch, auditory evoked etc.) have been administered both in the operation room and the sleep lab via Embedded Interactive Stimulus Unit which was developed in our lab. The overall study has provided some results for three domains of consciousness. In order to be able to monitor the changes we have incorporated Bispectral Index Monitoring to both sleep and anesthesia conditions.Results: The first stage results have provided a basic understanding in these altered states such that auditory stimuli have been successfully processed in both light and deep sleep stages. The anesthesia provides a sudden change in brain responsiveness; therefore a dosage dependent anesthetic administration has proved to be useful. The auditory processing was exemplified targeting N1 wave, with a thorough analysis from spectrogram to sLORETA. The frequency components were observed to be shifting throughout the stages. The propofol administration and the deeper sleep stages both resulted in the decreasing of N1 component. The sLORETA revealed similar activity at BA7 in sleep (BIS 70) and target propofol concentration of 1.2 μg/mL.Conclusions: The current study utilized similar stimulation and recording system and incorporated BIS dependent values to validate a common approach to sleep and anesthesia. Accordingly the brain has a complex behavior pattern, dynamically changing its responsiveness in accordance with stimulations and states. © 2010 Ozgoren et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

A Comparison of Different Algorithms for EEG Signal Analysis for the Purpose of Monitoring Depth of Anesthesia

All rights reserved. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals have been commonly used for assessing the level of anesthesia during surgery. However, the collected EEG signals are usually corrupted with artifacts which can seriously reduce the accuracy of the depth of anesthesia (DOA) monitors. In this paper, the main purpose is to compare five different EEG based anesthesia indices, namely median frequency (MF), 95% spectral edge frequency (SEF), approximate entropy (ApEn), sample entropy (SampEn) and permutation entropy (PeEn), for their artifacts rejection ability in order to measure the DOA accurately. The current analysis is based on synthesized EEG corrupted with four different types of artificial artifacts and real data collected from patients undergoing general anesthesia during surgery. The experimental results demonstrate that all indices could discriminate awake from anesthesia state (p < 0.05), however PeEn is superior to other indices. Furthermore, a combined index is obtained by applying these five indices as inputs to train, validate and test a feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN) model with bispectral index (BIS) as target. The combined index via ANN offers more advantages with higher correlation of 0.80 ± 0.01 for real time DOA monitoring in comparison with single indices.Center for Dynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine, National Central University, Taiwan which is sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant Number: MOST103-2911-I-008-001). National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 51475342)

A Comparison of Different Algorithms for EEG Signal Analysis for the Purpose of Monitoring Depth of Anesthesia

All rights reserved. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals have been commonly used for assessing the level of anesthesia during surgery. However, the collected EEG signals are usually corrupted with artifacts which can seriously reduce the accuracy of the depth of anesthesia (DOA) monitors. In this paper, the main purpose is to compare five different EEG based anesthesia indices, namely median frequency (MF), 95% spectral edge frequency (SEF), approximate entropy (ApEn), sample entropy (SampEn) and permutation entropy (PeEn), for their artifacts rejection ability in order to measure the DOA accurately. The current analysis is based on synthesized EEG corrupted with four different types of artificial artifacts and real data collected from patients undergoing general anesthesia during surgery. The experimental results demonstrate that all indices could discriminate awake from anesthesia state (p < 0.05), however PeEn is superior to other indices. Furthermore, a combined index is obtained by applying these five indices as inputs to train, validate and test a feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN) model with bispectral index (BIS) as target. The combined index via ANN offers more advantages with higher correlation of 0.80 ± 0.01 for real time DOA monitoring in comparison with single indices.Center for Dynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine, National Central University, Taiwan which is sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant Number: MOST103-2911-I-008-001). National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 51475342)