A user-friendly wearable single-channel EOG-based human-computer interface for cursor control

This paper presents a novel wearable single-channel electrooculography (EOG) based human-computer interface (HCI) with a simple system design and robust performance. In the proposed system, EOG signals for control are generated from double eye blinks, collected by a commercial wearable device (the NeuroSky MindWave headset), and then converted into a sequence of commands that can control cursor navigations and actions. The EOG-based cursor control system was tested on 8 subjects in indoor or outdoor environment, and the average accuracy is 84.42% for indoor uses and 71.50% for outdoor uses. Compared with other existing EOG-based HCI systems, this system is highly user-friendly and does not require any training. Therefore, this system has the potential to provide an easy-to-use and cheap assistive technique for locked-in patients who have lost their main body muscular abilities but with proper eye-condition. © 2015 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Musical Interfaces: Visualization and Reconstruction of Music with a Microfluidic Two-Phase Flow

Detection of sound wave in fluids can hardly be realized because of the lack of approaches to visualize the very minute sound-induced fluid motion. In this paper, we demonstrate the first direct visualization of music in the form of ripples at a microfluidic aqueous-aqueous interface with an ultra-low interfacial tension. The interfaces respond to sound of different frequency and amplitude robustly with sufficiently precise time resolution for the recording of musical notes and even subsequent reconstruction with high fidelity. Our work shows the possibility of sensing and transmitting vibrations as tiny as those induced by sound. This robust control of the interfacial dynamics enables a platform for investigating the mechanical properties of microstructures and for studying frequency-dependent phenomena, for example, in biological systems.published_or_final_versio

A solution for estimating the tensile yield strength from small specimens

The small punch test is an innovative test that utilises small disc-shaped specimens to assess the mechanical behaviour of materials. The main advantage is the relatively small specimen size. In this article, a modified analytical solution for the small punch maximum bend strength is proposed that is based on classical plate theory. A clear linear relationship is observed between the tensile yield strength σYS and the small punch maximum bend strength σy for both alloys and metal matrix composites. Copyright by ASTM Int'l (all rights reserved)

Cost-effective low-delay cloud video conferencing

The cloud computing paradigm has been advocated in recent video conferencing system design, which exploits the rich on-demand resources spanning multiple geographic regions of a distributed cloud, for better conferencing experience. A typical architectural design in cloud environment is to create video conferencing agents, i.e., virtual machines, in each cloud site, assign users to the agents, and enable inter-user communication through the agents. Given the diversity of devices and network connectivities of the users, the agents may also transcode the conferencing streams to the best formats and bitrates. In this architecture, two key issues exist on how to effectively assign users to agents and how to identify the best agent to perform a transcoding task, which are nontrivial due to the following: (1) the existing proximity-based assignment may not be optimal in terms of inter-user delay, which fails to consider the whereabouts of the other users in a conferencing session; (2) the agents may have heterogeneous bandwidth and processing availability, such that the best transcoding agents should be carefully identified, for cost minimization while best serving all the users requiring the transcoded streams. To address these challenges, we formulate the user-to-agent assignment and transcoding-agent selection problems, which targets at minimizing the operational cost of the conferencing provider while keeping the conferencing delay low. The optimization problem is combinatorial in nature and difficult to solve. Using Markov approximation framework, we design a decentralized algorithm that provably converges to a bounded neighborhood of the optimal solution. An agent ranking scheme is also proposed to properly initialize our algorithm so as to improve its convergence. The results from a prototype system implementation show that our design in a set of Internet-scale scenarios reduces the operational cost by 77% as compared to a commonly-adopted alternative, while simultaneously yielding lower conferencing delays.published_or_final_versio

A microfluidic chip with poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogel microarray on nanoporous alumina membrane for cell patterning and drug testing

Author name used in this publication: Zong-Bin LiuAuthor name used in this publication: Jin-Jiang YuAuthor name used in this publication: Arthur Fuk-Tat Mak2009-2010 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Research directions of the development of the integrated companies

Розглянуто інтерпретацію потенціалу підприємства не тільки як статичної (фіксуючої) характеристики діяльності, але і динамічної; наведено методику оцінки інвестиційного потенціалу інтегрованих підприємств.The article deals with the interpretation of the enterprise potential not only as static (locking) activity performance, but also dynamic; the technique of an estimation of investment potential of integrated enterprises is presented in the work

Anisotropy of graphite optical conductivity

The graphite conductivity is evaluated for frequencies between 0.1 eV, the energy of the order of the electron-hole overlap, and 1.5 eV, the electron nearest hopping energy. The in-plane conductivity per single atomic sheet is close to the universal graphene conductivity $e^2/4\hbar$ and, however, contains a singularity conditioned by peculiarities of the electron dispersion. The conductivity is less in the $c-$direction by the factor of the order of 0.01 governed by electron hopping in this direction.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure