An ECG-on-Chip with 535-nW/Channel Integrated Lossless Data Compressor for Wireless Sensors

This paper presents a low-power ECG recording system-on-chip (SoC) with on-chip low-complexity lossless ECG compression for data reduction in wireless/ambulatory ECG sensor devices. The chip uses a linear slope predictor for data compression, and incorporates a novel low-complexity dynamic coding-packaging scheme to frame the prediction error into fixed-length 16-bit format. The proposed technique achieves an average compression ratio of 2.25x on MIT/BIH ECG database. Implemented in a standard 0.35 um process, the compressor uses 0.565K gates/channel occupying 0.4 mm2 for four channels, and consumes 535 nW/channel at 2.4 V for ECG sampled at 512 Hz. Small size and ultra-low power consumption makes the proposed technique suitable for wearable ECG sensor applications

Household, community, sub-national and country-level predictors of primary cooking fuel switching in nine countries from the PURE study

Introduction. Switchingfrom polluting (e.g. wood, crop waste, coal)to clean (e.g. gas, electricity) cooking fuels can reduce household air pollution exposures and climate-forcing emissions.While studies have evaluated specific interventions and assessed fuel-switching in repeated cross-sectional surveys, the role of different multilevel factors in household fuel switching, outside of interventions and across diverse community settings, is not well understood. Methods.We examined longitudinal survey data from 24 172 households in 177 rural communities across nine countries within the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology study.We assessed household-level primary cooking fuel switching during a median of 10 years offollow up (∼2005–2015).We used hierarchical logistic regression models to examine the relative importance of household, community, sub-national and national-level factors contributing to primary fuel switching. Results. One-half of study households(12 369)reported changing their primary cookingfuels between baseline andfollow up surveys. Of these, 61% (7582) switchedfrom polluting (wood, dung, agricultural waste, charcoal, coal, kerosene)to clean (gas, electricity)fuels, 26% (3109)switched between different polluting fuels, 10% (1164)switched from clean to polluting fuels and 3% (522)switched between different clean fuels

DESIGN ANALYSIS FOR A ROTAMETER USING CFD

Rotameter is a variable area type of flow meter used to measure the flow rate of liquids and gases .In the present study design and analysis of Rotameter performance is done using ANSYS FLUENT 14 software. Validation of CFD methodology is done by using flow through pipe in a turbulent flow. K-ω-SST model was found to be best suited for this class of flows. In the design of Rotameter assuming CD as 2.4 and maximum flow rate of 100 lpm, preliminary design of a Rotameter has been done for the flow of water. After simulation using CFD flow rate obtained from CFD is not same as that from the preliminary designed values .Hence it is concluded that coefficient of drag is also dependent on diameter ratio. Improved design methodology of Rotameter is presented by considering effect d/D on coefficient of drag, by using a correlation derived on the basis of CFD computations. The effect of upstream disturbance (like valves) at various locations on the performance of Rotameter is analyzed using validated CFD methodology. It is concluded that has as long as the locations of disturbance is more than 5Din upstream of the inlet , the error in the measurement will be less than 2% . The validated CFD methodology is used to analyse the effect of density and viscosity of fluid on the accuracy of metering by a Rotameter .A need for the development of correlation for viscosity correction factors are highlighted. The analysis also demonstrated that a Rotameter designed and calibrated for water flow can be used for measurement of air flow at different pressures as long as correction factor are applied. The maximum error of in such cases will be order of 5%. The study has demonstrated that a validated CFD methodology can be used to accurately predict the performance of Rotameter even under non -standard condition

7-Bromo-3,3-dibutyl-8-methoxy-2,3-dihydro-1,5-benzothiazepin-4(5H)-one

In the title compound C18H26BrNO2S, the thiazepine ring adopts a boat conformation. The dihedral angle between the mean planes through the benzene ring and the four C atoms making up the basal plane of the boat is 35.8 (2)°. In the crystal, inversion dimers linked by pairs of N - H...O hydrogen bonds generate R 2 2(8) loops

Efficient online handwritten Chinese character recognition system using a two-dimensional functional relationship model

This paper presents novel feature extraction and classification methods for online handwritten Chinese character recognition (HCCR). The X-graph and Y -graph transformation is proposed for deriving a feature, which shows useful properties such as invariance to different writing styles. Central to the proposed method is the idea of capturing the geometrical and topological information from the trajectory of the handwritten character using the X-graph and the Y-graph. For feature size reduction, the Haar wavelet transformation was applied on the graphs. For classification, the coefficient of determination (R2p) from the two-dimensional unreplicated linear functional relationship model is proposed as a similarity measure. The proposed methods show strong discrimination power when handling problems related to size, position and slant variation, stroke shape deformation, close resemblance of characters, and non-normalization. The proposed recognition system is applied to a database with 3000 frequently used Chinese characters, yielding a high recognition rate of 97.4% with reduced processing time of 75.31%, 73.05%, 58.27% and 40.69% when compared with recognition systems using the city block distance with deviation (CBDD), the minimum distance (MD), the compound Mahalanobis function (CMF) and the modified quadratic discriminant function (MQDF), respectively. High precision rates were also achieved

The effect of two different doses of dexmedetomidine to attenuate cardiovascular and airway responses to tracheal extubation: a double blind randomized controlled trial

Background: The objective of the study is to assess the effectiveness of two different doses of dexmedetomidine, an alpha 2 adrenergic agonist, to attenuate the cardiovascular and airway responses to tracheal extubation and to observe the adverse effects. Methodology: Ninety ASA grade I and II patients aged 18-50 years were randomized into three groups; A, B, and C to receive dexmedetomidine 0.5µg/kg, 1µg/kg and normal saline placebo respectively about 15 minutes before discontinuation of inhalational agent. The heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure were recorded during administration of drug, before extubation, during extubation, at 1, 3 minutes and every 5 minutes thereafter. Extubation quality was assessed on a 5 point scale and sedation by Ramsay sedation score. Results: There was significant decrease in heart rate and mean arterial pressure (p<0.001) during extubation in group A and B. Ninety percent of patients in group A, 93.3% patients in group B and 16.7% in group C could be extubated smoothly. The average time to extubate was 12.13±2.11, 14.08±3.19 and 10.27±2.09 minutes in groups A, B, and C respectively (P value <0.001). Higher incidence of bradycardia (p<0.001) was observed in Group A and B whereas incidence of breath holding was higher in group C (p=0.024). Conclusion: A dose of 0.5µg/kg of dexmedetomidine administered as a bolus infusion before extubation attenuates the stress response to extubation as effectively as 1µg/kg. Higher sedation scores and longer time to extubate are seen with a dose of 1µg/kg without causing respiratory depression

Compact uniplanar antenna for WLAN applications

A compact dual-band uniplanar antenna for operation in the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN/HIPERLAN2 communication bands is presented. The dual-band antenna is obtained by modifying one of the lateral strips of a slot line, thereby producing two different current paths. The antenna occupies a very small area of 14.5times16.6 mm2 including the ground plane on a substrate having dielectric constant 4.4 and thickness 1.6 mm at 2.2 GHz. The antenna resonates with two bands from 2.2 to 2.52 GHz and from 5 to 10 GHz with good matching, good radiation characteristics and moderate gainInstitution of Engineering and Technolog

Particle filter framework for salient object detection in videos

Salient object detection in videos is challenging because of the competing motion in the background, resulting from camera tracking an object of interest, or motion of objects in the foreground. The authors present a fast method to detect salient video objects using particle filters, which are guided by spatio‐temporal saliency maps and colour feature with the ability to quickly recover from false detections. The proposed method for generating spatial and motion saliency maps is based on comparing local features with dominant features present in the frame. A region is marked salient if there is a large difference between local and dominant features. For spatial saliency, hue and saturation features are used, while for motion saliency, optical flow vectors are used as features. Experimental results on standard datasets for video segmentation and for saliency detection show superior performance over state‐of‐the‐art methods