Evaluation of electromagnetics radiation for stroke patients and non-stroke participants according to body segmentation

This research evaluates the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) for the stroke patients and non-stroke patients according to body segmentation. The human body is divided into three segments: top, middle and bottom. The frequency in hertz is collected at 23 points around the human body namely left side, right side and chakra points from 199 subjects undergoing post-stroke treatment and 100 non-stroke participants. The EMR is captured using frequency detector equipped with a dipole antenna. The data is collected by taking the reading of the frequency 5 times at each point at the same location; hence, the average value is calculated. The statistical analysis of the EMR are examined using SPSS software and Microsoft excel is used to calculate the average frequency of the data. In conclusion, the findings significantly shows that stroke patients has lower frequency value of EMR for both right side and left side but has higher frequency for chakra system. This is true for all the three segments of the body. Furthermore, it is also shown that there is no correlation between the left and the right side frequency for the stroke patients whereas the left-right correlation values are significantly high for the non-stroke participants. This observation justify that EMR from human body can contribute to early detection for stroke

Penerapan Pembelajaran Kontekstual Untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Berpikir Logis Dan Pemahaman Peserta Didik SMP Pada Materi Sifat-sifat Cahaya

Penelitian penerapan pembelajaran kontekstual pada materi sifat-sifat cahaya telah dilakukan di SMP Negeri I Meulaboh, Aceh Barat menggunakan metode eksperimen semu dengan desain pretest dan posttest group. Teknik pengambilan sampel secara purposif dengan membandingkan nilai rata-rata tiap kelas pada mata pelajaran sains. Dua kelas yang memiliki nilai yang sama dipilih sebagai kelas eksperimen dan kontrol. Pengumpulan data kemampuan berpikir logis (KBL) dan pemahaman peserta didik dilakukan melalui pretest dan posttest. Data KBL juga diperoleh dari lembar observasi dalam PBM sains. Uji data pretest KBL dan pemahaman kedua kelas menunjukkan bahwa salah satu data tidak berdistribusi normal, sehingga dipergunakan uji Mann-Whitney untuk menguji hipotesis penelitian. N-gain rata-rata KBL untuk kedua kelas berkategori tinggi dan uji hipotesis diperoleh z-hitung>z-tabel (2,87 > 2,58) yang artinya pembelajaran kontekstual dapat meningkatkan KBL secara lebih baik. Hasil observasi juga menunjukkan bahwa nilai rata-rata KBL pada kelas eksperimen lebih tinggi dari pada kelas kontrol. N-gain rata-rata pemahaman untuk kedua kelas berkategori sedang dan uji hipotesis menunjukkan z-hitung>z-tabel (2,92>2,33) yang artinya pembelajaran konstekstual meningkatkan kemampuan pemahaman peserta didik secara lebih baik. Dari hasil penelitian dapat disimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran kontekstual secara signifikan dapat meningkatkan KBL dan pemahaman peserta didik secara lebih baik pada materi sifat-sifat cahay

Root cause analysis (RCA) of fractured ASTM A53 carbon steel pipe at oil & gas company

Incident involving failures of ASTM A53 carbon steel (CS) pipe, connected to pressure safety valve (PSV) and carrying raw gas has caused serious supply disruption. This study was performed to identify the most probable cause of the pipe failure. It was conducted by reviewing the existing design, construction data and pipe material analysis using non-destructive techniques such as VT, PT, MT and UT along with metallographic, hardness and microscopic analysis. The investigation revealed that excessive material loss has occurred in both failure and its adjacent regions due to abrasive grinding, resulting in the formation of a through thickness flaw. These grindings were performed to accommodate the pre-installed piping spool to avoid alteration in the pipe position. RCA demonstrated that this rapid thinning of the steel pipe body later led to its failure. Metallurgical study using photomicrograph shows that the morphology of the steel material was consistent and did not show any evidence of internal corrosion or micro fractures. Further damage to the surface of already excessively reduced thickness occurred due to nominal pipe vibration and atmospheric effect during service. The research work described in the paper has a significant meaning to recognize the root cause of such failures in CS pipes and through given recommendations to eliminate future such happenings

Dental Status and Treatment Needs of Special Needs Children in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

The aim of the study is to determine the dental status and treatment needs of special needs children in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia and to investigate the association of caries prevalence and oral health status with sociodemographic variables. Methodology: This is a cross sectional study involving 574 special needs children aged 17 and below who attended Community-based Rehabilitation centres and special classes in the government schools. They were examined for dental caries (dmft/DMFT index of World Health Organization) and oral hygiene (Simplified Oral Hygiene Index, OHI-S of Green Vermillion). Statistical analyses include frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation for descriptive statistics, whilst one-way ANOVA, simple and multiple logistic regressions were used for association analysis. Result: Majority of the children was mentally handicapped. Over 90% were from parents of middle and lower level educational background. The caries prevalence was 54.9% with mean dmft/DMFT of 1.03plusmn2.13/1.22plusmn2.23. There was no significant association between caries prevalence with parentsrsquo education and monthly household income. The only sociodemographic factor that showed significant association with caries prevalence (plt0.001) was age. The mean of OHI-S was 1.13plusmn1.03. The oral hygiene status was inversely associated with age, parents education and monthly household income. 52.8% of the children required dental treatment. In the very young, aged 2 to 6 years, 85.2% of decayed teeth (d+D) were untreated and required some form of treatment (restoration or/and extraction). Conclusion: High caries prevalence and dental treatment needs were found among the special needs children in Negeri Sembilan. This study highlights the necessity to prioritize the service delivery to the younger age group. The findings will be useful as baseline data to enable future planning of oral health care delivery for children with disabilities.nbs

Single channel magnetic induction spectroscopy technique for fetal acidosis detection

Current fetal acidosis diagnosis needs an invasive measurement which required a doctor to puncture fetal scalp to acquire blood pH. This method introduced risk to the fetal which fetal scalp may bruise and infected. This paper discusses a noninvasive method employing a single channel magnetic induction spectroscopy technique as an alternative method to diagnose acidosis in fetal without puncturing the fetal scalp. The studies are based on numerical simulation models to investigate the most feasible sensor coil that is sensitive and effective to be implemented in hardware setup as the shape of coil influences directly the sensing performance of the magnetic induction spectroscopy system. The study has found that the circular coil is more sensitive than linear coil. The system tested with different pH samples to mimic the blood pH value. The result is very promising with good correlation approaching 1 has been achieved. Therefore, magnetic induction spectroscopy technique has good opportunity to be applied as an alternative method to detect acidosis in the fetal with circular coil is performed as the best sensing coils for MIS hardware

Distribution power loss minimization via distributed generation, capacitor and network reconfiguration

This paper presents a solution to solve the network reconfiguration, DG coordination (location and size) and capacitor coordination (location and size), simultaneously. The proposed solution will be determined by using Artificial Bee Colony (ABC). Various case studies are presented to see the impact on the test system, in term of power loss reduction and also voltage profiles. The proposed approach is applied to a 33-bus test system and simulate by using MATLAB programming. The simulation results show that combination of DG, capacitor and network reconfiguration gives a positive impact on total power losses minimization as well as voltage profile improvement compared to other case studies

Second derivative and contour analysis of PPG for diabetic patients

Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases associated with the production and/or reaction of insulin leading to hyperglycemia. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level is generally measured for hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia and the duration of having diabetes are two factors that contribute to developing complications. A trend of increasing arterial stiffness has been identified in Type 2 diabetes. Photoplethysmograph (PPG) pulse wave provides a ‘window’ into the properties of small arteries whereas stiffening of these arteries will alter the PPG waveform. In this research, the potential of PPG in discriminating type 2 diabetic patients between two different levels of HbA1c has been investigated (diabetic patient with HbA1c 10% as unhealthy group). Contour analysis of PPG signal and second derivative photoplethysmograph (SDPPG) techniques have been used to identify the feasible parameter for this research. From this study, it shows that there is no significant difference for both group of diabetic patient for ratio of b/a, which extracted from SDPPG. The mean ratio for controlled group is 0.5692 and 0.6067 for unhealthy group, p=0.180. Other than that, the results show that there is a statistical significant different for the some variables extracted

Rehabilitation monitoring prototype: Arduino Nano 35 BLE

Nowadays, smart health has been developing in the healthcare system by implementing the Internet of Things. One of the implementations of smart health is remote monitoring systems for rehabilitating patients such as stroke. Today, with the rising Covid-19 pandemic, patients undergoing rehabilitation at home have difficulties meeting with their doctors due to the moving restrictions. The healthcare facilities are focused on treating Covid-19 patients. These restrictions have caused doctors and patients not to meet regularly to collect their data on the rehabilitation progress. This research suggests building a prototype to monitor a post-stroke patient's lower limb strength rehabilitation process by using embedded sensors and microcontrollers. The prototype will measure key components of the rehabilitation process and will be discussed in the later section of this paper

Layer thickness dependence of the current induced effective field vector in Ta|CoFeB|MgO

The role of current induced effective magnetic field in ultrathin magnetic heterostructures is increasingly gaining interest since it can provide efficient ways of manipulating magnetization electrically. Two effects, known as the Rashba spin orbit field and the spin Hall spin torque, have been reported to be responsible for the generation of the effective field. However, quantitative understanding of the effective field, including its direction with respect to the current flow, is lacking. Here we show vector measurements of the current induced effective field in Ta|CoFeB|MgO heterostructrures. The effective field shows significant dependence on the Ta and CoFeB layers' thickness. In particular, 1 nm thickness variation of the Ta layer can result in nearly two orders of magnitude difference in the effective field. Moreover, its sign changes when the Ta layer thickness is reduced, indicating that there are two competing effects that contribute to the effective field. The relative size of the effective field vector components, directed transverse and parallel to the current flow, varies as the Ta thickness is changed. Our results illustrate the profound characteristics of just a few atomic layer thick metals and their influence on magnetization dynamics

Single class classifier using FMCD based non-metric distance for timber defect detection

In this work, we propose a robust Mahalanobis one class classifier with Fast Minimum Covariance Determinant estimator (MC-FMCD) for species independent timber defect detection. Having known in timber inspection research that there is a lack of defect samples compared to defect-free samples (imbalanced data), this unsupervised approach applies outlier detection concept with no training samples required. We employ a non-segmenting approach where a timber image will be divided into non-overlapping local regions and the statistical texture features will then be extracted from each of the region. The defect detection works by calculating the Mahalanobis distance (MD) between the features and the distribution average estimate. The distance distribution is approximated using chi-square distribution to determine outlier (defects). The approach is further improved by proposing a robust distribution estimator derived from FMCD algorithm which enhances the defect detection performance. The MC-FMCD is found to perform well in detecting various types of defects across various defect ratios and over multiple timber species. However, blue stain evidently shows poor performance consistently across all timber species. Moreover, the MC-FMCD performs significantly better than the classical MD which confirms that using the robust estimator clearly improved the timber defect detection over using the conventional mean as the average estimator