Feedback control of electrical stimulation electrode arrays

Electrical stimulation electrode arrays are an emerging technology that enables muscles to be artificially contracted through the activation of their associated motor neurons. A principal application of electrical stimulation is to assist human motion for orthotic or therapeutic purposes. This paper develops a framework for the design of model-based electrode array feedback controllers that balance joint angle tracking performance with the degree of disturbance and modeling mismatch that can exist in the true underlying biomechanical system. This framework is used to develop a simplified control design procedure that is suitable for application in a clinical setting. Experimental results evaluate the feasibility of the control design approach through tests on ten participants using both fabric and polycarbonate electrode arrays

Bolted joint integrity monitoring with second harmonic generated by guided waves

In this study, the second harmonic generation due to the contact nonlinearity caused by bolt loosening is studied experimentally and numerically using three-dimensional explicit finite element simulations. In particular, it is demonstrated that the magnitude of the second harmonic generation normally increases with the loosening of the bolted joint, and there is a reasonable agreement between the numerical simulations and experimental results. The finite element model, which was validated against the experimentally measured data, is further utilized to investigate an important practical situation when a loosened bolt is weakened by fatigue cracks located at the edge of the hole. The numerical case studies show that the contact nonlinearity and the change of the behaviour of the second harmonic generation with the tightening level are very different to the corresponding results with the fatigue cracks. This identified difference in the second harmonic generation behaviour can serve as an indicator of the bolted joint integrity and thus provide early warning for engineers to make decision on the necessity of carrying out further safety inspections. Overall, the findings of this study provide improved physical insights into second harmonic generation for bolt loosening, which can be used to further advance damage detection techniques using nonlinear guided waves.Yi Yang, Ching-Tai Ng, Andrei Kotouso

Suppression of the structural phase transition and lattice softening in slightly underdoped Ba(1-x)K(x)Fe2As2 with electronic phase separation

We present x-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and neutron diffraction measurements on the slightly underdoped iron pnictide superconductor Ba(1-x)K(x)Fe2As2, Tc = 32K. Below the magnetic transition temperature Tm = 70K, both techniques show an additional broadening of the nuclear Bragg peaks, suggesting a weak structural phase transition. However, macroscopically the system does not break its tetragonal symmetry down to 15 K. Instead, XRPD patterns at low temperature reveal an increase of the anisotropic microstrain proportionally in all directions. We associate this effect with the electronic phase separation, previously observed in the same material, and with the effect of lattice softening below the magnetic phase transition. We employ density functional theory to evaluate the distribution of atomic positions in the presence of dopant atoms both in the normal and magnetic states, and to quantify the lattice softening, showing that it can account for a major part of the observed increase of the microstrain.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Effects of dietary crude protein concentration on animal performance and nitrogen utilisation efficiency at different stages of lactation in Holstein-Friesian dairy cows

Publication history: Accepted - 16 May 2022; Published online - 13 June 2022Nitrogen (N) excretion from livestock production systems is of significant environmental concern; however, few studies have investigated the effect of dietary CP concentration on N utilisation efficiency at different stages of lactation, and the interaction between dietary CP levels and stages of lactation on N utilisation. Holstein-Friesian dairy cows (12 primiparous and 12 multiparous) used in the present study were selected from a larger group of cows involved in a whole-lactation study designed to examine the effect of dietary CP concentration on milk production and N excretion rates at different stages of lactation. The total diet CP concentrations evaluated were 114 (low CP), 144 (medium CP) and 173 (high CP) g/kg DM, with diets containing (g/kg DM) 550 concentrates, 270 grass silage and 180 maize silage. During early (70–80 days), mid- (150–160 days) and late (230–240 days) lactation, the same 24 animals were transferred from the main cow house to metabolism units for measurements of feed intake, milk production and faeces and urine outputs. Diet had no effect on BW, body condition score, or milk fat, protein or lactose concentration, but DM intake, milk yield and digestibilities of DM, energy and N increased with increasing diet CP concentration. The effect of diet on milk yield was largely due to differences between the low and medium CP diets. Increasing dietary CP concentration significantly increased urine N/N intake and urine N/manure N, and decreased faecal N/N intake, milk N/N intake and manure N/N intake. Although increasing dietary CP level significantly increased urine N/milk yield and manure N/milk yield, differences in these two variables between low and medium CP diets were not significant. There was no significant interaction between CP level and stage of lactation on any N utilisation variable, indicating that the effects of CP concentration on these variables were similar between stages of lactation. These results demonstrated that a decrease in dietary CP concentration from high (173 g/kg DM) to medium level (144 g/kg DM) may be appropriate for Holstein-Friesian dairy cow to maintain milk production efficiency, whilst reducing both urine N and manure N as a proportion of N intake or milk production.This research received funding from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of Northern Ireland (project codes: 0700 and 17-4-03)

Orbit spaces of free involutions on the product of two projective spaces

Let $X$ be a finitistic space having the mod 2 cohomology algebra of the product of two projective spaces. We study free involutions on $X$ and determine the possible mod 2 cohomology algebra of orbit space of any free involution, using the Leray spectral sequence associated to the Borel fibration $X \hookrightarrow X_{\mathbb{Z}_2} \longrightarrow B_{\mathbb{Z}_2}$. We also give an application of our result to show that if $X$ has the mod 2 cohomology algebra of the product of two real projective spaces (respectively complex projective spaces), then there does not exist any $\mathbb{Z}_2$-equivariant map from $\mathbb{S}^k \to X$ for $k \geq 2$ (respectively $k \geq 3$), where $\mathbb{S}^k$ is equipped with the antipodal involution.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in Results in Mathematic

Lifetime elongation for wireless sensor network using queue-based approaches

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is envisioned as a cluster of tiny power-constrained devices with functions of sensing and communications. Sensors closer to a sink node have a larger forwarding traffic burden and consume more energy than nodes further away from the sink. The whole lifetime of WSN is deteriorated because of such an uneven node power consumption patterns, leading to what is known as an energy hole problem (EHP). From open literatures, most research works have focused on how to optimally increase the probability of sleeping states using various wake-up strategies. In this article, we propose a novel power-saving scheme to alleviate the EHP based on the N-policy M/M/1 queuing theory. With little or no extra management cost, the proposed queue-based power-saving technique can be applied to prolong the lifetime of the WSN economically and effectively. A mathematical analysis on the optimal control parameter has been made in detail. Focusing on many-to-one WSN, numerical and network simulation results validate that the proposed approach indeed provides a feasibly cost-effective approach for lifetime elongation of WSN

Dual paths node-disjoint routing for data salvation in mobile ad hoc

The operational patterns of multifarious backup strategies on AODV-based (Ad-hoc On-Demand Vector) routing protocols are elaborated in this article. To have a broader picture on relevant routing protocols together, variants of AODV-based backup routing protocols are formulated by corresponding algorithms, and also each of them are simulated to obtain the necessary performance metrics for comparisons in terms of packet delivery ratio, average latency delay, and the normalized routing load. Then to make the process of data salvation more efficiently in case of link failure, we explore the possibility of combining the AODV backup routing strategy and on-demand node-disjoint multipath routing protocols. This article proposes an improved approach named DPNR (Dual Paths Node-disjoint Routing) for data salvation, a routing protocol that maintains the only two shortest backup paths in the source and destination nodes. The DPNR scheme can alleviate the redundancy-frames overhead during the process of data salvation by the neighboring intermediate nodes. Our simulation results have demonstrated that DPNR scheme delivers good data delivery performance while restricting the impacts of transmission collision and channel contention. The mathematical rationale for our proposed approach is stated as well

Probing neutral top-pion via a flavor-changing process γγ→tcˉΠt0\gamma\gamma\to t\bar{c}\Pi_{t}^{0}

In the framework of topcolor-assisted-technicolor model(TC2), we study a flavor-changing neutral top-pion production process $\gamma\gamma\to t\bar{c}\Pi_{t}^{0}$. The study shows that there exists a resonance effect which can enhance the cross section up to a few fb even tens fb. For a yearly luminosity 100 $fb^{-1}$ at future linear colliders, there might be hundreds even thousands events to be produced. On the other hand, the background of such flavor-changing process is very clean due to the GIM mechanism in SM . With such sufficient events and clean background, neutral toppion could be detected at future linear colliders with high center of energy and luminosity. Our study provides a possible way to test TC2 model.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures,has been accepted by Phys.Rev.

Optical response of metal nanoparticle chains

We study the optical responses of metal nanoparticle chains. Multiple scattering calculations are used to study the extinction cross sections of silver nanosphere chains of finite length embedded in a glass matrix. The transmission and reflection coefficients of periodic 2D arrays of silver nanospheres are also calculated to understand the interaction between nanoparticle chains. The results are in agreement with recent experiments. The splitting of plasmon-resonance modes for different polarizations of the incident light are explored. Results on the effect of disorder are also presented.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure