Fish-hook injuries: a risk for fishermen

Fishing is one of the best known and practiced human activities. However, you should remember that, when casting the hook from the riverbank or grasping it to add bait, fishermen run a real risk of injury if the hook punctures the skin

Exploring spatial-frequency-sequential relationships for motor imagery classification with recurrent neural network

Abstract Background Conventional methods of motor imagery brain computer interfaces (MI-BCIs) suffer from the limited number of samples and simplified features, so as to produce poor performances with spatial-frequency features and shallow classifiers. Methods Alternatively, this paper applies a deep recurrent neural network (RNN) with a sliding window cropping strategy (SWCS) to signal classification of MI-BCIs. The spatial-frequency features are first extracted by the filter bank common spatial pattern (FB-CSP) algorithm, and such features are cropped by the SWCS into time slices. By extracting spatial-frequency-sequential relationships, the cropped time slices are then fed into RNN for classification. In order to overcome the memory distractions, the commonly used gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long-short term memory (LSTM) unit are applied to the RNN architecture, and experimental results are used to determine which unit is more suitable for processing EEG signals. Results Experimental results on common BCI benchmark datasets show that the spatial-frequency-sequential relationships outperform all other competing spatial-frequency methods. In particular, the proposed GRU-RNN architecture achieves the lowest misclassification rates on all BCI benchmark datasets. Conclusion By introducing spatial-frequency-sequential relationships with cropping time slice samples, the proposed method gives a novel way to construct and model high accuracy and robustness MI-BCIs based on limited trials of EEG signals

The role of leptin in the respiratory system: an overview

Since its cloning in 1994, leptin has emerged in the literature as a pleiotropic hormone whose actions extend from immune system homeostasis to reproduction and angiogenesis. Recent investigations have identified the lung as a leptin responsive and producing organ, while extensive research has been published concerning the role of leptin in the respiratory system. Animal studies have provided evidence indicating that leptin is a stimulant of ventilation, whereas researchers have proposed an important role for leptin in lung maturation and development. Studies further suggest a significant impact of leptin on specific respiratory diseases, including obstructive sleep apnoea-hypopnoea syndrome, asthma, COPD and lung cancer. However, as new investigations are under way, the picture is becoming more complex. The scope of this review is to decode the existing data concerning the actions of leptin in the lung and provide a detailed description of leptin's involvement in the most common disorders of the respiratory system

Short note: A simple nomogram for interpretation due to magnetic horizontal cylinders

The magnetic anomaly Delta F due to a long horizontal cylinder yields three points related to its extrema. A nomogram is presented for the determination of some source parameters of the causative body

Interpretation of magnetic anomalies of dikes using correlation factors

The magnetic anomaly due to a buried dike consists of the sum of two easily separated elementary functions. These functions, which have simple symmetry, are called even and odd functions. The correlation factors (r(0,1) for the even and r(0,2) for the odd Function) between least-squares residual anomalies from even and odd functions are computed. Correlation values are used to determine the depth to the top and the half-width of the dike. The method also includes the determination of the index parameter and the amplitude coefficient. The validity of the method is tested against a theoretical and a field example where the parameters of the latter were determined by other investigators in comparing the results

Integrated use of hydrochemistry and resistivity methods in groundwater contamination caused by a recently closed solid waste site

In order to investigate the groundwater ies aimed at defining the spatial contamination by solid waste disposal using both ies aimed at defining the spatial hydrochemical and geophysical methods, the Halkali (Istanbul) solid waste disposal site which was closed in 1994 was investigated. The disposal site lies on a ridge between two valleys filed with alluvium. A total of six boreholes were drilled on two lines across the Menekse valley adjacent to the Halkali site. Groundwater samples collected from these boreholes were analyzed for various contaminant parameters. The results indicate that TDS and chloride concentrations decrease horizontally away from the waste site whereas they increase with depth. Electrical soundings carried out at 12 locations yielded high resistivity values at the upstream part of Menekse valley while lower values were obtained from the locations near the leachate seepage points

Energy, exergy and environmental analyses of biomass gasifier combined integrated plant

Yılmaz, Fatih ( Aksaray, Yazar )The fundamental purpose of this chapter is to examine a novel renewable energy supported combined plant. The suggested chapter occurs with biomass gasifier unit, gas turbine system, Rankine cycle, single-effect absorption cycle, hydrogen generation unit, dryer cycle, and hot-water production unit. This chapter is designed and developed for useful outputs, such as heating, cooling, electricity, hydrogen, drying and hot water with a single biomass energy input. In this context, detailed energy and exergy efficiency, and also environmental effect analyses are carried out with Engineering Equation Solver software. The effects of environment and gasification temperatures and biomass mass flow rate changes on the plant performance and on carbon emissions are investigated and presented as graphs. Results display that the energetic and exergetic efficiency of integrated plant are found as 63.84 and 59.26%. Also, the overall hydrogen generation and exergy destruction rate are 0.068 kg/s and 52,529 kW, respectively

Spring tube braces for seismic isolation of buildings

A new low-cost seismic isolation system based on spring tube bracings has been proposed and studied at the Structural and Earthquake Engineering Laboratory of Istanbul Technical University. Multiple compression-type springs are positioned in a special cylindrical tube to obtain a symmetrical response in tension and compression-type axial loading. An isolation floor, which consists of pin-ended steel columns and spring tube bracings, is constructed at the foundation level or any intermediate level of the building. An experimental campaign with three stages was completed to evaluate the capability of the system. First, the behavior of the spring tubes subjected to axial displacement reversals with varying frequencies was determined. In the second phase, the isolation floor was assessed in the quasi-static tests. Finally, a ¼ scaled 3D steel frame was tested on the shake table using actual acceleration records. The transmitted acceleration to the floor levels is greatly diminished because of the isolation story, which effects longer period and higher damping. There are no stability and self-centering problems in the isolation floor.</p