Fluency Assistance Device (FAD): Masker Upgrades

There are around seventy million people internationally who have a stutter, a form of fluency disorder. Some fluency assistance devices are available to the public, but most are highly expensive or unreliable. The Fluency Assistive Device (FAD) team seeks to assist a niche community of these individuals for whom therapy has not worked, and who currently rely on a device known as the Edinburgh Masker. To best reach this community, FAD is partnering with Dave Germeyer, who has invaluable experience repairing these masker devices for his clientele. FAD is redesigning the masker to increase its portability, functionality, and cost-effectiveness by developing an improved analog and new digital version. The Analog Masker v1.3 focuses on updated components and consolidated circuitry to eliminate troublesome wiring of the original. The Digital Masker v1.0 employs a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller to achieve masker functionality, offering the flexibility of alternative fluency assistance algorithms to assist a broader group of users. An updated prototype of the Analog Masker v1.3 was fabricated and tested for power consumption and overall functional output characteristics versus the original Edinburgh version. The Analog Masker v1.3 has also been fully packaged and enclosed to produce a client testable unit. Bluetooth audio output for the Digital Masker has almost been completed, and two of the alternative algorithms have been coded for the masking output. One of these algorithms, Delayed Altered Feedback (DAF), now produces the expected output in response to an audio test input. Clarity and integrity of the DAF signal output have also been improved. The Masking Altered Feedback (MAF) algorithm that emulates the behavior of the Edinburgh original on the Digital Masker v1.0 is under development. Funding for this work provided by The Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2022/1006/thumbnail.jp

Fluency Assistance Device (FAD): Masker Upgrades

Around seventy million people internationally have a stutter, a form of a fluency disorder. Some fluency assistance devices are available to the public, but most are highly expensive or unreliable. The Fluency Assistive Device (FAD) team seeks to assist a niche community of these individuals who currently rely on a device known originally as the Edinburgh Masker by partnering with Dave Germeyer. Utilizing his expertise in repairing the Edinburgh Masker, FAD is developing two new versions of the masker to increase its portability, functionality, and cost-effectiveness. The first is an update of the original called the Analog Masker (Version 1.1). A prototype of the Analog Masker v1.1 has been developed, tested and is currently being revised based on the results. Revisions include updating the layout of the board and finalizing the power supply circuitry. The second version, known as the Digital Masker (Version 1.0), will use a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller to achieve masker functionality. Bluetooth audio output for the Digital Masker has been tested, and two algorithms have been created for the masking output. The supporting software for the Digital Masker is nearing completion. The schematic and the layout design have been started for future implementation of the hardware.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1005/thumbnail.jp

LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo