Neuro fuzzy control of the FES assisted freely swinging leg of paraplegic subjects

The authors designed a neuro fuzzy control strategy for control of cyclical leg movements of paraplegic subjects. The cyclical leg movements were specified by three `swing phase objectives', characteristic of natural human gait. The neuro fuzzy controller is a combination of a fuzzy logic controller and a neural network, which makes the controller self tuning and adaptive. Two experiments have been performed, in which the performance of the neuro fuzzy control strategy has been compared with conventional PID control strateg

Towards an application of muon scattering tomography as a technique for detecting rebars in concrete

Inspection of the world's ageing population of reinforced concrete infrastructure is a multi-billion dollar problem. Historically, it has not been uncommon for structures to deviate from their designs,or for design drawings to be lost. This leaves asset managers the challenging task of making structural health assessments and maintenance decisions with incomplete knowledge. While current techniques for detecting rebars in concrete are typically limited to penetration depths of less than 50 cm, muon scattering tomography (MST) is a non-destructive, non-invasive technique which shows great promise for high-depth 3D concrete imaging. This paper uses Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate that MST can be used to detect and locate 100 cm length rebars with a diameter of 33.7 ± 7.3 mm independently of the rebar's location within a concrete structure. This corresponds to a volume of inclusion of 894 ± 386 cm3. The volume of the inclusion can be reconstructed with a resolution of 5.4 ± 0.3% for volumes above 2 500 cm3. It is furthermore demonstrated that 30 mm diameter rebars can be distinguished as two separate objects provided their separation is more than 40–60 mm, and that single and double layers of rebars are distinguishable using the technique. It is anticipated that MST could inform practical studies which support more informed maintenance and modeling, eventually allowing digital twins to be created for a larger subset of historical steel and concrete structures

Temporal profile of body temperature in acute ischemic stroke: Relation to infarct size and outcome

Background: High body temperatures after ischemic stroke have been associated with larger infarct size, but the temporal profile of this relation is unknown. We assess the relation between temporal profile of body temperature and infarct size and functional outcome in patients with acute ischemic stroke. Methods: In 419 patients with acute ischemic stroke we assessed the relation between body temperature on admission and during the first 3 days with both infarct size and functional outcome. Infarct size was measured in milliliters on CT or MRI after 3 days. Poor functional outcome was defined as a modified Rankin Scale score ≥3 at 3 months. Results: Body temperature on admission was not associated with infarct size or poor outcome in adjusted analyses. By contrast, each additional 1.0 °C in body temperature on day 1 was associated with 0.31 ml larger infarct size (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.04-0.59), on day 2 with 1.13 ml larger infarct size(95% CI, 0.83-1.43), and on day 3 with 0.80 ml larger infarct size (95% CI, 0.48-1.12), in adjusted linear regression analyses. Higher peak body temperatures on days two and three were also associated with poor outcome (adjusted relative risks per additional 1.0 °C in body temperature, 1.52 (95% CI, 1.17-1.99) and 1.47 (95% CI, 1.22-1.77), respectively). Conclusions: Higher peak body temperatures during the first days after ischemic stroke, rather than on admission, are associated with larger infarct size and poor functional outcome. This suggests that prevention of high temperatures may improve outcome if continued for at least 3 days