307 research outputs found
Improving engagement of stroke survivors using desktop virtual Reality-Based serious games for upper limb rehabilitation: A multiple case study
Engagement with upper limb rehabilitation post-stroke can improve rehabilitation outcomes. Virtual Reality can be used to make rehabilitation more engaging. In this paper, we propose a multiple case study to determine: (1) whether game design principles (identified in an earlier study as being likely to engage) actually do engage, in practice, a sample of stroke survivors with a Desktop Virtual Reality-based Serious Game designed for upper limb rehabilitation; and (2) what game design factors support the existence of these principles in the game. In this study, we considered 15 principles: awareness , feedback , interactivity , flow , challenge , attention , interest , involvement , psychological absorption , motivation , effort , clear instructions , usability , purpose , and a first-person view . Four stroke survivors used, for a period of 12 weeks, a Virtual Reality-based upper limb rehabilitation system called the Neuromender Rehabilitation System. The stroke survivors were then asked how well each of the 15 principles was supported by the Neuromender Rehabilitation System and how much they felt each principle supported their engagement with the system. All the 15 tested principles had good or reasonable support from the participants as being engaging. Use of feedback was emphasised as an important design factor for supporting the design principles, but there was otherwise little agreement in important design factors among the participants. This indicates that more personalised experiences may be necessary for optimised engagement. The insight gained can be used to inform the design of a larger scale statistical study into what engages stroke survivors with Desktop Virtual Reality-based upper limb rehabilitation
The Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization: 8 Station Results
We are developing the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization
(PAPER) to detect 21cm emission from the early Universe, when the first stars
and galaxies were forming. We describe the overall experiment strategy and
architecture and summarize two PAPER deployments: a 4-antenna array in the
low-RFI environment of Western Australia and an 8-antenna array at our
prototyping site in Green Bank, WV. From these activities we report on system
performance, including primary beam model verification, dependence of system
gain on ambient temperature, measurements of receiver and overall system
temperatures, and characterization of the RFI environment at each deployment
site.
We present an all-sky map synthesized between 139 MHz and 174 MHz using data
from both arrays that reaches down to 80 mJy (4.9 K, for a beam size of 2.15e-5
steradians at 154 MHz), with a 10 mJy (620 mK) thermal noise level that
indicates what would be achievable with better foreground subtraction. We
calculate angular power spectra () in a cold patch and determine them
to be dominated by point sources, but with contributions from galactic
synchrotron emission at lower radio frequencies and angular wavemodes. Although
the cosmic variance of foregrounds dominates errors in these power spectra, we
measure a thermal noise level of 310 mK at for a 1.46-MHz band
centered at 164.5 MHz. This sensitivity level is approximately three orders of
magnitude in temperature above the level of the fluctuations in 21cm emission
associated with reionization.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, submitted to AJ. Revision 2 corrects a scaling
error in the x axis of Fig. 12 that lowers the calculated power spectrum
temperatur
A new layout optimization technique for interferometric arrays, applied to the MWA
Antenna layout is an important design consideration for radio interferometers
because it determines the quality of the snapshot point spread function (PSF,
or array beam). This is particularly true for experiments targeting the 21 cm
Epoch of Reionization signal as the quality of the foreground subtraction
depends directly on the spatial dynamic range and thus the smoothness of the
baseline distribution. Nearly all sites have constraints on where antennas can
be placed---even at the remote Australian location of the MWA (Murchison
Widefield Array) there are rock outcrops, flood zones, heritages areas,
emergency runways and trees. These exclusion areas can introduce spatial
structure into the baseline distribution that enhance the PSF sidelobes and
reduce the angular dynamic range. In this paper we present a new method of
constrained antenna placement that reduces the spatial structure in the
baseline distribution. This method not only outperforms random placement
algorithms that avoid exclusion zones, but surprisingly outperforms random
placement algorithms without constraints to provide what we believe are the
smoothest constrained baseline distributions developed to date. We use our new
algorithm to determine antenna placements for the originally planned MWA, and
present the antenna locations, baseline distribution, and snapshot PSF for this
array choice.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA
The EoR Sensitivity of the Murchison Widefield Array
Using the final 128 antenna locations of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA),
we calculate its sensitivity to the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) power spectrum
of red- shifted 21 cm emission for a fiducial model and provide the tools to
calculate the sensitivity for any model. Our calculation takes into account
synthesis rotation, chro- matic and asymmetrical baseline effects, and excludes
modes that will be contaminated by foreground subtraction. For the fiducial
model, the MWA will be capable of a 14{\sigma} detection of the EoR signal with
one full season of observation on two fields (900 and 700 hours).Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Accepted for publication in MNRAS
Letters. Supplementary material will be available in the published version,
or by contacting the author
Interferometric imaging with the 32 element Murchison Wide-field Array
The Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) is a low frequency radio telescope,
currently under construction, intended to search for the spectral signature of
the epoch of re-ionisation (EOR) and to probe the structure of the solar
corona. Sited in Western Australia, the full MWA will comprise 8192 dipoles
grouped into 512 tiles, and be capable of imaging the sky south of 40 degree
declination, from 80 MHz to 300 MHz with an instantaneous field of view that is
tens of degrees wide and a resolution of a few arcminutes. A 32-station
prototype of the MWA has been recently commissioned and a set of observations
taken that exercise the whole acquisition and processing pipeline. We present
Stokes I, Q, and U images from two ~4 hour integrations of a field 20 degrees
wide centered on Pictoris A. These images demonstrate the capacity and
stability of a real-time calibration and imaging technique employing the
weighted addition of warped snapshots to counter extreme wide field imaging
distortions.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. This is the draft before journal
typesetting corrections and proofs so does contain formatting and journal
style errors, also has with lower quality figures for space requirement
The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array
Precursor telescopes and is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy
Observatory in the Murchison Shire of the mid-west of Western Australia, a
location chosen for its extremely low levels of radio frequency interference.
The MWA operates at low radio frequencies, 80-300 MHz, with a processed
bandwidth of 30.72 MHz for both linear polarisations, and consists of 128
aperture arrays (known as tiles) distributed over a ~3 km diameter area. Novel
hybrid hardware/software correlation and a real-time imaging and calibration
systems comprise the MWA signal processing backend. In this paper the as-built
MWA is described both at a system and sub-system level, the expected
performance of the array is presented, and the science goals of the instrument
are summarised.Comment: Submitted to PASA. 11 figures, 2 table
The Murchison Widefield Array
It is shown that the excellent Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory site
allows the Murchison Widefield Array to employ a simple RFI blanking scheme and
still calibrate visibilities and form images in the FM radio band. The
techniques described are running autonomously in our calibration and imaging
software, which is currently being used to process an FM-band survey of the
entire southern sky.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proceedings of Science [PoS(RFI2010)016].
6 pages and 3 figures. Presented at RFI2010, the Third Workshop on RFI
Mitigation in Radio Astronomy, 29-31 March 2010, Groningen, The Netherland
The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview
The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a dipole-based aperture array
synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It
is capable of a wide range of science investigations, but is initially focused
on three key science projects. These are detection and characterization of
3-dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21cm line of neutral
hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) at redshifts from 6 to 10,
solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation
effects on signals from distant background sources,and high-sensitivity
exploration of the variable radio sky. The array design features 8192
dual-polarization broad-band active dipoles, arranged into 512 tiles comprising
16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture
1.5km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3km. All
tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom FPGA-based hardware, yielding a
Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromatic uv coverage and unprecedented point
spread function (PSF) quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time
using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is
located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is
characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet
environment,allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Proceedings
of the IEE
Electrical detection of the temperature induced melting transition of a DNA hairpin covalently attached to gold interdigitated microelectrodes
The temperature induced melting transition of a self-complementary DNA strand covalently attached at the 5′ end to the surface of a gold interdigitated microelectrode (GIME) was monitored in a novel, label-free, manner. The structural state of the hairpin was assessed by measuring four different electronic properties of the GIME (capacitance, impedance, dissipation factor and phase angle) as a function of temperature from 25°C to 80°C. Consistent changes in all four electronic properties of the GIME were observed over this temperature range, and attributed to the transition of the attached single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) from an intramolecular, folded hairpin structure to a melted ssDNA. The melting curve of the self-complementary single strand was also measured in solution using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and UV absorbance spectroscopy. Temperature dependent electronic measurements on the surface and absorbance versus temperature values measured in solution experiments were analyzed assuming a two-state process. The model analysis provided estimates of the thermodynamic transition parameters of the hairpin on the surface. Two-state analyses of optical melting data and DSC measurements provided evaluations of the thermodynamic transition parameters of the hairpin in solution. Comparison of surface and solution measurements provided quantitative evaluation of the effect of the surface on the thermodynamics of the melting transition of the DNA hairpin
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