EMG Signals Analysis of BF and RF Muscles In Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) During Walking

This paper presents the analysis of Electromyography (EMG) signals at lower limb muscles during walking. The muscles of Biceps Femoris (BF) and Rectus Femoris (RF) were examined between ASD and TD children. The EMG signals pattern will be observed over one gait cycle and the statistical analysis will be used to compare the significant difference of two muscles between ASD and TD children. The result shows that there are significant differences in RF muscle for both ASD and TD children at 70% of gait cycle (p value is equal to 0.007) and at 90% of gait cycle (p value is equal to 0.023). From this result, the RF muscle shall be considered as the vital muscle for rehabilitation plan

Case Series of Post-Thrombolysis Patients Undergoing Hemicraniectomy for Malignant Anterior Circulation Ischaemic Stroke

While ischaemic stroke remains a leading cause of death and disability, there have been recent advancements in treatment modalities including thrombolysis and decompressive hemicraniectomy. A retrospective review of patients treated in our NHS teaching hospital, in Plymouth (UK), over a 2 year period identified 17 thrombolysed patients, of whom two had undergone subsequent decompressive hemicraniectomy. These were non-dominant hemisphere strokes in young patients, aged 51 and 57. Initial NIHSS scores were 16 and 17, and they received thrombolysis at 2 hrs 42 min and 5 hrs 10 min post onset of symptoms respectively. CT imaging demonstrated cerebral swelling with significant midline shift in both cases, and decompressive hemicraniectomy was undertaken at 29 hrs 8 min and 27 hrs 30 min post-thrombolysis. We found no significant intra-operative complications attributable to prior use of thrombolytics. Both patients have had acceptable psychological and physical outcomes, with Barthel Index scores of 40 and 25, and MMSE scores of 29/30 and 27/30. We conclude that the use of thrombolytic therapy does not contra-indicate subsequent decompressive hemicraniectomy in well selected patients with non-dominant hemisphere strokes. More research in this field is required to elucidate factors which would facilitate recognition of stroke patients who will benefit most from aggressive medical and neurosurgical intervention

Correlation Between Cutting Force and Residual Stress in Dry End-Milling of Inconel HX

Residual stress in the end-milled subsurface can significantly affect the fatigue performance of end-milled material. In the end-milling process, the generation of residual stress is extremely complex, which is closely related to the spindle speed, feed per tooth and cutting force. Thus, it is crucial to elucidate the influence of spindle speed and feed per tooth on cutting force and residual stress, also the correlation between cutting force and residual stress in terms of spindle speed and feed per tooth. According to this, dry end-milling of Inconel HX was performed by climb-milling using Kennametal KYS40 solid ceramic end-mill. From this experimental test, cutting force and residual stress showed a U-shaped relationship with the increase of spindle speed, while cutting force and residual stress showed a linear relationship with the increase of feed per tooth. Furthermore, for low cutting force and residual stress, the focus should be on choosing the optimum combination of spindle speed (21,400 to 24,100 rpm) and feed per tooth (0.014 to 0.016 mm/tooth)

Correlation Between Cutting Force and Residual Stress in Dry End-Milling of Inconel HX

Residual stress in the end-milled subsurface can significantly affect the fatigue performance of end-milled material. In the end-milling process, the generation of residual stress is extremely complex, which is closely related to the spindle speed, feed per tooth and cutting force. Thus, it is crucial to elucidate the influence of spindle speed and feed per tooth on cutting force and residual stress, also the correlation between cutting force and residual stress in terms of spindle speed and feed per tooth. According to this, dry end-milling of Inconel HX was performed by climb-milling using Kennametal KYS40 solid ceramic end-mill. From this experimental test, cutting force and residual stress showed a U-shaped relationship with the increase of spindle speed, while cutting force and residual stress showed a linear relationship with the increase of feed per tooth. Furthermore, for low cutting force and residual stress, the focus should be on choosing the optimum combination of spindle speed (21,400 to 24,100 rpm) and feed per tooth (0.014 to 0.016 mm/tooth)

Analysis of EMG based Arm Movement Sequence using Mean and Median Frequency

This paper present the studies of analysis arm movement sequence which dedicated for upper limb rehabilitation after stroke. The recovery of the arm could be optimized if the rehabilitation therapy is in a right manner. Upper limb weakness after stroke is prevalent in post-stroke rehabilitation, many factors that can deficit muscle strength there are neural, muscle structure and function change after stroke. Rehabilitation process needs to start as soon as after a stroke attack, repetitive and conceptualized. On the other hand monitoring of muscle activity also need in the rehabilitation process to evaluate muscle strength, motor function and progress in the rehabilitation process. The objective of this research is to analysis arm movement sequence using the feature frequency domain. In this study deltoid, biceps and flexor carpum ulnaris (FCU) muscles will be monitored by surface electromyography (sEMG). Five healthy subjects male and female become participants in data recording. Mean frequency (MNF) and median frequency (MDF) domain are two signals processing technique used for arm movement sequence analyzing. The analysis result showed that MNF is better than MDF where MNF produced higher frequency than MDF from each segment. From the data analysis, this movement sequence design more focuses on deltoid and FCU muscles treatment. This movement sequence has five condition movements. First undemanding, second difficult, third moderate, fourth moderate and the last cool-down movements. The best movement sequence minimum has four condition movements warming up - moderate - difficult - cool-down

Modeling dynamic anisotropic behaviour and spall failure in commercial aluminium alloys AA7010

This paper presents a finite strain constitutive model to predict a complex elastoplastic deformation behaviour involves very high pressures and shockwaves in orthotropic materials of aluminium alloys. The previous published constitutive model is used as a reference to start the development in this work. The proposed formulation that used a new definition Mandel of stress tensor to define Hill’s yield criterion and a new shock equation of state (EOS) of generalised orthotropic pressure is further enhanced with Grady spall failure model to closely predict shockwave propagation and spall failure in chosen commercial materials. This hyperelastic-plastic constitutive model is implemented as 1᨞᨟ᨠᨡ 1 1 1 a new material model in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)-DYNA3D code of UTHM’s version, named Material Type 92 (Mat92). The implementation of a new EOS that is modified to match the generalised orthotropic pressure including the spall failure is also discussed in this paper. The capability of the proposed constitutive model to capture the complex behaviour of the selected material is validated against range of Plate Impact Test data at 234, 450 and 895 ms impact velocities

A cytotoxicity and sub-acute toxicity study on tea leaves cultivated in Sabah

The present work investigated the cytotoxicity capacity of the MDA-MB-231 (human cancer-derived), A549 (human lung cancer-derived), Caov3 (human ovarian cancer-derived), and HeLa (human cervical cancer-derived) cell lines on a wide range of tea leaves; green tea, black tea, tea waste, and compost from Sabah. A group of male and female Sprague Dawley rats was used to screen the sub-acute toxicity of green tea extract in tea leaves from Sabah for 28 d. Results revealed that the ethanol extract of tea leaves had strong cytotoxic activity against all cancer lines. Tea waste showed higher cytotoxicity when extracted using hot water. The ethanol extract of black tea leaves exhibited the highest inhibitory activity against the proliferation of Caov3, whereas the ethanol extract of green tea leaves exhibited a promising cytotoxic activity against MDA-MB-231 and HeLa cell lines. Toxicity studies showed decreased testes weight and increased liver weight in male rats that were administered with 5000 mg/kg of tea extract. This coincided with the significant increase portrayed by enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in the serum of treated male rats in the 5000 mg/kg dose group. Moreover, there was an increase of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and ALT for the female rats in the 5000 mg/kg dose group. The increased levels of ALT and ALP enzymes, as well as liver weight, signified mechanical trauma in the liver of male and female rats in the 5000 mg/kg dose group

An alternative bioassay using Anabas testudineus (Climbing perch) cholinesterase for metal ions detection

Climbing Perch or its scientific name, Anabas testudineus is one of the freshwater fish belonging to the family of Anabantidae. It is widely distributed in ponds, swamps and estuaries in Asia. In this study, cholinesterase (ChE) was partially purified from the liver of A. testudineus through ion exchange chromatography. This purification method provided a recovery yield of 5.36% with a purification fold of 6.6. The optimum conditions for ChE assay were identified to be 2.5 mM of butyrylthiocholine iodide (BTC) with pH 8.0 in Tris-HCl buffer at 40°C. Substrate specificity profile also indicated that ChE favours BTC as substrate because it records the highest catalytic efficiency (V/K). Protein analysis through Native-PAGE showed that ion exchange chromatography is an effective method to partially purify ChE. Metal ion inhibition tests were conducted and mercury (Hg) was found to show the highest inhibition effect (87.30%) whereas lead (Pb) shows the lowest inhibition effect (28.01%). All these findings showed that partially purified ChE from the liver of A. testudineus is suitable to be used as a bioindicator to detect the presence of metal ions

Analysis on background subtraction for street surveillance

Background subtraction is a well-known technique used in computer vision applications. However, in public surveillance system, the utilization of background subtraction still new and far from being solved. Insufficient analysis of the background subtraction algorithms made the situation getting worse. The analysis of the commonly-used algorithms is presented in this paper. Experiments are conducted to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the algorithms by using three video sequences. The more suitable algorithm for various conditions is expected to be presented as the results in this paper

Characterization of industrial by-products as asphalt paving material

Most of the recent research is focusing on the utilization of industrial by-products in road construction. The intention is not only to mitigate the problem of waste being dumped to the landfills but to encourage their use as construction material without compromising quality and performance of the road. Steel slag and bottom ash are the industrial by-products generated in large quantity by industry. This study investigates the characteristics of steel slag and bottom ash to be utilized as aggregate in asphalt pavement. Both materials were characterized in terms of physical, chemical and morphological characteristics compared to the conventional granite aggregate. The results revealed that both materials have much potential to be used as aggregate in asphalt mix. The bottom ash was observed weaker in terms of strength, but the steel slag was found much stronger than the granite. The morphological structure of bottom ash and steel slag disclosed that these are made up of porous and rough-edged granular particles with slightly higher water absorption