Development of Arm Exo-skeleton for Bicep Brachii Muscle

This report presents the study on design of arm exoskeleton for stroke rehabilitation purpose. The mechanical design of the exoskeleton focuses on few aspects of the arm exoskeleton which are length and the design of the exoskeleton and motor specification. Besides, the experiment of obtaining surface electromyography (sEMG) signal for repetition training for physiotherapy patient purpose is carried out to observe the difference in amplitude and muscle signal of different subjects (four males and four females) due to the amount of training and the angle of the training. The signals are filtered and the average of the root mean square of the data is compared

Fine pitch printing on a non-woven fabric for high frequency applications

Interest in wireless body area networks (WBAN) operating in the millimetre-wave regime (60 GHz) is increasing due to concerns over the security of data transfer. Obtaining fine pitch in this frequency regime is essential, as the design dimensions scale inversely with wavelength. In the area of wearable electronics, printing onto fabrics is challenging, due to the porosity of the material. Some researchers have considered screen printing for realising interconnects onto fabrics. In this paper, inkjet printing is investigated for fine pitch printing on a nonwoven fabric targeted for high frequency applications

Surface treatments for inkjet printing onto a PTFE-based substrate for high frequency applications

Inkjet printing onto laminates for use in high frequency applications (high frequency laminates) is challenging, due to the substrate surface roughness present after etching away the copper layer(s). This has a detrimental effect on interconnect losses as the frequency increases. In this paper, different surface treatments to reduce the surface roughness of a typical high frequency laminate (RO3006) are investigated. In particular, the importance of matching the substrate surface energy to the ink to achieve a smooth coated layer for the case of a UV cured insulator is demonstrated. This is achievable within the parameters of heating the platen, which is a more flexible approach compared to modifying the ink to improve the ink-substrate interaction. In printing onto the surface modified substrates, the substrate roughness was observed to affect the printed line width significantly. A surface roughness factor was introduced to take into account the phenomenon by modifying the original formula of Smith et al. Lastly, the authors show that the printed line widths are also influenced by the surface tension arising from charges present on the surface modified substrates

Micromechanics model for predicting effective elastic moduli of porous ceramic matrices with randomly oriented carbon nanotube reinforcements

Multi-step micromechanics-based models are developed to predict the overall effective elastic moduli of porous ceramic with randomly oriented carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforcements. The presence of porosity in the ceramic matrix that has been previously neglected in the literature is considered in present analysis. The ceramic matrix with porosity is first homogenized using a classical Mori-Tanaka model. Then, the homogenized porous ceramic matrix with randomly oriented CNTs is analysed using two micromechanics models. The results predicted by the present models are compared with experimental and analytical results that have been reported in literature. The comparison shows that the discrepancies between the present analytical results and experimental data are about 10% for 4 wt% of CNTs and about 0.5% for 8 wt% CNTs, both substantially lower than the discrepancies currently reported in the literature

Empirical Study on the Use of Chinese Fantasy Novel for Vocabulary Acquisition among the Non-Native Learners of Mandarin

This article discussed the use of Chinese fantasy novel for vocabulary acquisition among the non-native learners of Mandarin. Research findings have been affirmative

Are countries with higher levels of mental health cases experience higher divorce rates?

This paper aims to determine if spouses’ mental health can be a factor affecting the divorce rate of marriage. A regression analysis is carried out to determine how the percentage of mental health cases in a country’s population affects the divorce rates of a country, while controlling the effects of labour force participation and income. The data from the selected 20 countries are collected from reputable world organizations selected. The results obtained from the regression analysis show that mental health has a marginally significant association with divorce rate and the association between income index and divorce rate is statistically significant

Unraveling the Information Role of Online Reviews: Distinguishing between the Competing Effect, Local and Global Peer Effects on Consumer Choice

This study examines the information role of online reviews on competing products and from local and global peers on consumers’ choice of products. By empirically analyzing a data set from a restaurant review website, we find that a one unit increase in average valence (volume) of spatially adjacent and feature similar alternatives reduces the odds of choosing a focal product by 92.0% (66.6%) and by 72.2% (45.8%) respectively. Competition faced by restaurants, in terms of review valence and volume, is thus stronger along geographical space, rather than characteristics space. The valence, volume and dispersion of valences of reviews posted by local peers are found to have influences on purchase decisions. Importantly, local peer effects exert more significant influences on consumer choices as compared to global peer effects. These new findings on the dimensions of competition, local and global peer effects of online reviews provide implications for academic research and practice

Searching for Product-Market Fit with Externally Developed Components: Effects on Time to Product-Market Fit

Nascent digital start-ups that leverage digital technology (DT) could use externally developed components (EDCs) to search for DT features needed for product-market fit (PMF). Drawing on the organizational search literature, we investigate the relationship between nascent digital start-ups\u27 search breadth and search depth (in terms of EDCs use) on their time to achieve PMF (proxied by the receipt of Series A funding). We employ a survival analysis using data on startups and their EDC use from Crunchbase and LinkedIn. Our results reveal that higher search breadth reduces the time to PMF, whereas higher search depth increases it. Higher levels of interdependency between the DT and nascent digital start-ups’ business strengthen search breadth’s time reduction effect. Our findings contribute to the literature on digital entrepreneurship and organizational search and offer suggestions for how nascent digital start-ups should develop their DT in the early years

Hyperparameters tuning of random forest with harmony search in credit scoring

Correct identification of defaulters and non-defaulters in the lending industry is a crucial task for financial institutions. Credit scoring is a tool utilized for credit granting decisions. Recently, Random Forest (RF) is actively researched in credit scoring due to two main benefits, i.e. non-parametric flexibility to account for various data patterns with good classification ability and the computed features importance that can explain the attributes. Hyperparameters tuning is a necessary procedure to ensure good performance of a RF. This paper proposes the use of a metaheuristic, Harmony Search (HS), to form a hybrid HS-RF to conduct hyperparameters tuning. A Modified HS (MHS) is also proposed, forming MHS-RF, for effective yet efficient search of the RF hyperparameters. Along with parallel computing, MHS-RF effectively reduces the computational efforts of the hyperparameters tuning procedure. The proposed hybrid models are benchmarked with standard statistical models on the Lending Club peer-to-peer lending dataset. The computational results show that a well-tuned RF have better performance than statistical models, with MHS-RF reported the best performance yet being the most efficient in hyperparameters tuning of RF

Modelling powder-binder segregation in powder injection moulding

Powder injection moulding (PIM) is a shape forming technique for advance ceramic or metal that allows low cost and complex shape manufacturing. The segregation between powder and binder is a common occurrence during PIM which leads to the inhomogeneity in the green bodies. A multiphase flow numerical model has been developed based on Eulerian approach to simulate this phenomenon in the injection stage of silicon nitride-based ceramics. A viscosity model based on experimental data of the feedstock is employed in the numerical model. Simulated results from the numerical model have been compared with experimental results. A powder distribution analysis is compared with density distribution test of the green bodies with similar process parameters and flow trends is compared experimental short shots