Detection of coupling misalignment by extended orbits

In this paper a ‘SpectraQuest’ demonstrator is used to introduce misalignment into a rotating machinery set-up. Depending on the coupling used in the set-up, angular and/or parallel misalignment can be brought in the rotating system. Traditionally, the data captured by accelerometers is transferred into the frequency domain in order to interpret the vibrations measured by the accelerometers. The frequency domain has proven its usefulness but even the time domain can come in handy to draw the right conclusions regarding to misalignment in a rotating set-up. Orbit plots display the integrated data captured by accelerometers, in order to display the movement of the rotating shaft. The influence of the misalignment and imbalance on these orbits will be discussed

KdV cnoidal waves in a traffic flow model with periodic boundaries

An optimal-velocity (OV) model describes car motion on a single lane road. In particular, near to the boundary signifying the onset of traffic jams, this model reduces to a perturbed Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation using asymptotic analysis. Previously, the KdV soliton solution has then been found and compared to numerical results (see Muramatsu and Nagatani (1999)). Here, we instead apply modulation theory to this perturbed KdV equation to obtain at leading order, the modulated cnoidal wave solution. At the next order, the Whitham equations are derived, which have been modified due to the equation perturbation terms. Next, from this modulation system, a family of spatially periodic cnoidal waves are identified that characterise vehicle headway distance. Then, for this set of solutions, we establish the relationship between the wave speed, the modulation term and the driver sensitivity. This analysis is confirmed with comparisons to numerical solutions of the OV model. As well, the long-time behaviour of these solutions is investigated

Inner Space Preserving Generative Pose Machine

Image-based generative methods, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) have already been able to generate realistic images with much context control, specially when they are conditioned. However, most successful frameworks share a common procedure which performs an image-to-image translation with pose of figures in the image untouched. When the objective is reposing a figure in an image while preserving the rest of the image, the state-of-the-art mainly assumes a single rigid body with simple background and limited pose shift, which can hardly be extended to the images under normal settings. In this paper, we introduce an image "inner space" preserving model that assigns an interpretable low-dimensional pose descriptor (LDPD) to an articulated figure in the image. Figure reposing is then generated by passing the LDPD and the original image through multi-stage augmented hourglass networks in a conditional GAN structure, called inner space preserving generative pose machine (ISP-GPM). We evaluated ISP-GPM on reposing human figures, which are highly articulated with versatile variations. Test of a state-of-the-art pose estimator on our reposed dataset gave an accuracy over 80% on PCK0.5 metric. The results also elucidated that our ISP-GPM is able to preserve the background with high accuracy while reasonably recovering the area blocked by the figure to be reposed.Comment: http://www.northeastern.edu/ostadabbas/2018/07/23/inner-space-preserving-generative-pose-machine

Travelling wave solutions of the perturbed mKdV equation that represent traffic congestion

A well-known optimal velocity (OV) model describes vehicle motion along a single lane road, which reduces to a perturbed modified Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV) equation within the unstable regime. Steady travelling wave solutions to this equation are then derived with a multi-scale perturbation technique, where the travelling wave propagation coordinate depends upon slow and fast variables. The leading order solution in the hierarchy is then written in terms of these multi-scaled variables. At the following order, a system of differential equations is highlighted that govern the slowly evolving properties of the leading solution. Next, it is shown that the critical points of this system signify travelling waves without slow variation. As a result, a family of steady waves with constant amplitude and period are identified. When periodic boundary conditions are satisfied, these solutions' parameters, including the wave speed, are associated with the driver's sensitivity, $\hat{a}$, which appears in the OV model. For some given $\hat{a}$, solutions of both an upward and downward form exist, with the downward type corresponding to traffic congestion. Numerical simulations are used to validate the asymptotic analysis and also to examine the long-time behaviour of our solutions

Joint Metabonomic and Instrumental Analysis for the Classification of Migraine Patients with 677-MTHFR Mutations

Migraine is a neurological disorder that correlates with an increased risk of cerebrovascular lesions. Genetic mutations of the MTHFR gene are correlated to migraine and to the increased risk of artery pathologies. Also, migraine patients show altered hematochemical parameters, linked to an impaired platelet aggregation mechanism. Hence, the vascular assessment of migraineurs is of primary importance

Peptide-MHC Cellular Microarray with Innovative Data Analysis System for Simultaneously Detecting Multiple CD4 T-Cell Responses

Peptide:MHC cellular microarrays have been proposed to simultaneously characterize multiple Ag-specific populations of T cells. The practice of studying immune responses to complicated pathogens with this tool demands extensive knowledge of T cell epitopes and the availability of peptide:MHC complexes for array fabrication as well as a specialized data analysis approach for result interpretation. T cell cultures. A novel statistical methodology was also developed to facilitate batch processing of raw array-like data into standardized endpoint scores, which linearly correlated with total Ag-specific T cell inputs. Applying these methods to analyze Influenza A viral antigen-specific T cell responses, we not only revealed the most prominent viral epitopes, but also demonstrated the heterogeneity of anti-viral cellular responses in healthy individuals. Applying these methods to examine the insulin producing beta-cell autoantigen specific T cell responses, we observed little difference between autoimmune diabetic patients and healthy individuals, suggesting a more subtle association between diabetes status and peripheral autoreactive T cells.The data analysis system is reliable for T cell specificity and functional testing. Peptide:MHC cellular microarrays can be used to obtain multi-parametric results using limited blood samples in a variety of translational settings

A Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems: Computational Creativity Evaluation Based on What it is to be Creative

Computational creativity is a flourishing research area, with a variety of creative systems being produced and developed. Creativity evaluation has not kept pace with system development with an evident lack of systematic evaluation of the creativity of these systems in the literature. This is partially due to difficulties in defining what it means for a computer to be creative; indeed, there is no consensus on this for human creativity, let alone its computational equivalent. This paper proposes a Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems (SPECS). SPECS is a three-step process: stating what it means for a particular computational system to be creative, deriving and performing tests based on these statements. To assist this process, the paper offers a collection of key components of creativity, identified empirically from discussions of human and computational creativity. Using this approach, the SPECS methodology is demonstrated through a comparative case study evaluating computational creativity systems that improvise music

Stabilising touch interactions in cockpits, aerospace, and vibrating environments

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. Incorporating touch screen interaction into cockpit flight systems is increasingly gaining traction given its several potential advantages to design as well as usability to pilots. However, perturbations to the user input are prevalent in such environments due to vibrations, turbulence and high accelerations. This poses particular challenges for interacting with displays in the cockpit, for example, accidental activation during turbulence or high levels of distraction from the primary task of airplane control to accomplish selection tasks. On the other hand, predictive displays have emerged as a solution to minimize the effort as well as cognitive, visual and physical workload associated with using in-vehicle displays under perturbations, induced by road and driving conditions. This technology employs gesture tracking in 3D and potentially eye-gaze as well as other sensory data to substantially facilitate the acquisition (pointing and selection) of an interface component by predicting the item the user intents to select on the display, early in the movements towards the screen. A key aspect is utilising principled Bayesian modelling to incorporate and treat the present perturbation, thus, it is a software-based solution that showed promising results when applied to automotive applications. This paper explores the potential of applying this technology to applications in aerospace and vibrating environments in general and presents design recommendations for such an approach to enhance interactions accuracy as well as safety

On the relation between action selection and movement control in 5- to 9-month-old infants

Although 5-month-old infants select action modes that are adaptive to the size of the object (i.e., one- or two-handed reaching), it has largely remained unclear whether infants of this age control the ensuing movement to the size of the object (i.e., scaling of the aperture between hands). We examined 5-, 7-, and 9-month-olds’ reaching behaviors to gain more insight into the developmental changes occurring in the visual guidance of action mode selection and movement control, and the relationship between these processes. Infants were presented with a small set of objects (i.e., 2, 3, 7, and 8 cm) and a large set of objects (i.e., 6, 9, 12, and 15 cm). For the first set of objects, it was found that the infants more often performed two-handed reaches for the larger objects based on visual information alone (i.e., before making contact with the object), thus showing adaptive action mode selection relative to object size. Kinematical analyses of the two-handed reaches for the second set of objects revealed that inter-trial variance in aperture between the hands decreased with the approach toward the object, indicating that infants’ reaching is constrained by the object. Subsequent analysis showed that between hand aperture scaled to object size, indicating that visual control of the movement is adjusted to object size in infants as young as 5 months. Individual analyses indicated that the two processes were not dependent and followed distinct developmental trajectories. That is, adaptive selection of an action mode was not a prerequisite for appropriate aperture scaling, and vice versa. These findings are consistent with the idea of two separate and independent visual systems (Milner and Goodale in Neuropsychologia 46:774–785, 2008) during early infancy