Intelligent imaging system for optimal night time driving

In the recent era, vehicles become a need of public. According to Statistic Portal, in year 2018 alone, more than 81 million vehicles were sold. This results in a large number of vehicles commuting on roads, thus increases the risks of road users. Road safety is the paramount and joint responsibility of all road users, which include pedestrians and travellers using different means of transport. Safety is always a main concern for drivers. It is a complex and difficult task even for an experienced senior driver. Road accident is the most unwanted thing to happen to a road user; it was reported that most of the road users are familiar with the general rules and safety measures when using roads, nonetheless their carelessness are causing the accidents and crashes. Zhang et.al [1] proposed an intelligent driver assist system for urban driving. This system provided smart navigation for its users with intelligent parking assistance to improve driving comfort while ensure the safety of the driver. The investigations of the system performance showed high precisions in the determination of the traffic flow and parking availabilit

Photoacoustic Technology for Biological Tissues Characterization

The existing PA imaging systems showed mixed performance in terms of imaging characteristic and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The aim of this work is to present the use of an in-house assembled photoacoustic (PA) system using a modulating laser beam of wavelength 633 nm for two-dimensional (2D) characterization of biological tissues. The differentiation of the tissues in this work is based on differences in their light absorption, wherein the produced photoacoustic signal detected by a transducer was translated into phase value (Ф) that corresponds to the peak amplitude of tissue optical absorption. This research investigated variation in PA response between the considered different parts of chicken carcasses: fat, liver and muscle. This work found fat tissue to produce the strongest PA signals with mean ± standard deviation (SD) Ф = 2.09 ± 0.31 while muscle produced the least signal strength with Ф = 1.03 ± 0.17. This work attributes these observations and the presence of stripes pattern in 2D Ф images of fat and muscle to the differences in the optical and structural properties of these samples. In addition, a comparison has been made in an attempt to better assess the performance of the developed system with the related ones.This work concluded that the developed system may be useful as an alternative means in the noninvasive and label-free visualization and characterization of intact biological tissues in terms of their structural and physiological context in the future

Piezoelectric Photoacoustic System for Fluid Flow Monitoring

The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using a laboratory assembled piezoelectric based photoacoustic (PA) system for noncontact monitoring fluid flow. This is to overcome the drawbacks of some existing fluid flow detection systems, which include expensive equipment and their maintenance cost, limited sensitivity and specificity in detecting signals from restricted regions or at low flow velocity. The produced PA signal waves detected by a piezoelectric transducer used in this study was processed to determine the required phase value (Ф), which value was found to correlate linearly with fluid flow status. The fluid pressure difference of 1.16 pascals (Pa) and 11.90 Pa applied to the developed mock circulatory system was observed to produce changes in phase value with mean ± standard deviation (SD) ΔФ of 0.79 ± 0.07 rad and 2.17 ± 0.07 rad, respectively, suggesting a linear response of the developed system with changes in circulation system. This trend was supported with the relatively low absolute difference of 0.07 ± 0.01 rad in the predicted values as compared to that of the ground truth. This work concluded that the capabilities and simplicity of the proposed PA system renders it feasible for cost effective, non-destructive assessment of fluid flow in future studies

Photoacoustic imaging system for fluid flow visualization and biological tissues characterization

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a biomedical imaging modality, which work is based on the photoacoustic effect, to provide illumination of biological tissues with strong optical absorption contrast and high spatial resolution at a short scanning time. The drawbacks of some existing PA fluid imaging systems, which include expensive equipment and their maintenance cost, limited sensitivity in detecting signals from restricted regions. This research describes an in-house developed two-axis PA imaging system for investigation of fluid flow and photoacoustic signatures of biological tissues using a continuous laser beam of output wavelength 633 nm to deliver light to the targeted tissue samples and fluid. The resulting acoustic signal detected by a transducer was used to determine the amplitude of tissues optical absorption via the measured phase value (Ф). This research began with the validation of the functionality of the developed system using biological system comprised of a mock circulatory system overlaid by different parts of poultry namely fat, liver and muscle of different sizes. The validated system was then deployed for use on human subjects, and the considered experiment settings included at rest, under warm water and arterial blood flow occlusion conditions. This work reported a consistent increase in the PA signals of all tissues with both sample size and the fluid flow rate. In addition, fat tissues were found to produce the largest PA signals with mean ±standard deviation (SD) Ф = 1.12 ± 0.11, while muscle produced the least signals with Ф = 0.828 ±0.20, which trend agreed well with the previous literature. It was found from the experiments on human subjects that phase difference (ΔФ) was proportional to the change in the velocity of blood flow within microcirculation of an investigated site. The mean and SD of percent relative phase difference for these volunteers were calculated as 51.68 % ± 24.27 % and -68.57 % ± 14.78 % for warm water and blood flow occlusion condition, respectively. The overall sensitivity of the system is 77. 3%. This work concluded the feasibility of this system for non-invasive assessment and visualization of blood perfusion and biological tissues, which deemed it suitable for implementation in healthcare applications

An overview of out-of-step protection in power systems

Power system is subjected to an extensive variety of little or bigger disturbance to the system during the operation. The power system that designed as one of the main requirement is to survive from the larger type of disturbances like faults. The power swing in certain system is the variation in three phase power flow in the power system. This paper mainly discussed the power swing and distance relay and the effect of the power swing on the distance relay and demonstrate about the basic power system stability and power swing phenomena. Moreover, out of step protection and detection applications are revised as well. At the end, the paper also demonstrated the past study of out of step application of TNB 275 KV network

Cyber-victimization and perceived depression: Serial mediation of self-esteem and learned-helplessness

Literature suggests that the perception of being cyber-victimized is a stronger predictor of depression symptoms than the perception of being victimized offline, and that learned-helplessness can explain the prediction of perceived cyber-victimization on perceived depression. Nevertheless, other studies suggested that the link between perceived cyber-victimized and learned-helplessness is weakened by state self-esteem. This study investigates the double mediation effect of state self-esteem and learned-helplessness on the relationship between perceived cyber-victimized and perceived depression. 104 participants between 18 and 30 years of age (63 females, 41 males, 1 prefer not to say) have been recruited through haphazard sampling method to fill in the Cyberbullying Victimization Scale, State Self-Esteem Scale, Learned Helplessness Scale, and Beck’s Depression Inventory. Our findings suggest that the double mediation effect occurs. As a conclusion, our findings suggested that cyberbullied social media users will only fall into perceived depression when their state self-esteem is also negatively affected by their perception of being cyberbullied, up to the point where they learn that they are helpless. Further implication are discussed at the end of the paper

Pharmacotherapy of alzheimer’s disease: seeking clarity in a time of uncertainty

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is recognized as a major health hazard that mostly affects people older than 60 years. AD is one of the biggest medical, economic, and social concerns to patients and their caregivers. AD was ranked as the 5th leading cause of global deaths in 2016 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Many drugs targeting the production, aggregation, and clearance of Aβ plaques failed to give any conclusive clinical outcomes. This mainly stems from the fact that AD is not a disease attributed to a single-gene mutation. Two hallmarks of AD, Aβ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), can simultaneously induce other AD etiologies where every pathway is a loop of consequential events. Therefore, the focus of recent AD research has shifted to exploring other etiologies, such as neuroinflammation and central hyperexcitability. Neuroinflammation results from the hyperactivation of microglia and astrocytes that release pro-inflammatory cytokines due to the neurological insults caused by Aβ plaques and NFTs, eventually leading to synaptic dysfunction and neuronal death. This review will report the failures and side effects of many anti-Aβ drugs. In addition, emerging treatments targeting neuroinflammation in AD, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and receptor-interacting serine/threonine protein kinase 1 (RIPK1), that restore calcium dyshomeostasis and microglia physiological function in clearing Aβ plaques, respectively, will be deliberately discussed. Other novel pharmacotherapy strategies in treating AD, including disease-modifying agents (DMTs), repurposing of medications used to treat non-AD illnesses, and multi target-directed ligands (MTDLs) are also reviewed. These approaches open new doors to the development of AD therapy, especially combination therapy that can cater for several targets simultaneously, hence effectively slowing or stopping AD

Harmonic Reduction of a Single-Phase Multilevel Inverter Using Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization

Power inverter play an important role in power system especially with its capability on reducing system size and increase efficiently. The recent research trends of power electronic system are focusing on multilevel inverter topics in optimization on voltage output, reducing the total harmonics distortion, modulation technique, and switching configuration. The research emphasizes the optimization with a fundamental switching frequency method that is the optimized harmonic stepped waveform (OHSW) modulation method. The selective harmonic elimination (SHE) calculation has adapted with genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in order to speed up the calculation. Both bioinspired algorithms are compared in terms of total harmonic distortion (THD) and selective harmonic elimination for both equal and unequal sources. The overall result showed that both algorithms have high accuracy in solving the nonlinear equation. However, the genetic algorithm showed better output quality in terms of selective harmonic elimination which overall no exceeding 0.4%. Particle swarm optimization shows strength in finding the best total harmonic distortion where in seven-level cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter (m=0.8) shows 6.8% only as compared to genetic algorithm. Simulation for three-level, five-level, and seven-level for each multilevel inverter at different circumferences had been done in this research. The result draws out a conclusion where the possibility of having a filterless high-efficient inverter can be achieved

A review on equipment protection and system protection relay in power system

Power system equipment is configured and connected together with multiple voltage levels in existing electrical power system. There are varieties of electrical equipment obtainable in the power system predominantly from generation side up to the distribution side. Consequently, appropriate protections must be apt to prevent inessential disturbances that lead to voltage instability, voltage collapse and sooner a total blackout took place in the power system. The understanding of each component on the system protection is critical. This is due to any abnormal condition and failure can be analyzed and solved effectively due to the rapid changing and development on the power system network. Therefore, the enhancement of power quality can be achieved by sheltering the equipment with protection relay in power system. Moreover, the design of a systematic network is crucial for the system protection itself. Several types of protective equipment and protection techniques are taken into consideration in this paper. Hence, the existing accessible types and methods of system protection in the power system network are reviewed

In everlasting fight against academic procrastination: The roles of classroom engagement and internal locus of control

This study aims to test the hypothesis that classroom engagement mediates the relationship between students’ internal locus of control and academic procrastination. As many as 302 students from a private university between 18 to 26 years of age were recruited to respond to Internal-External Locus of control Scale, Classroom Engagement Inventory, and Academic Procrastination scale. Bootstrapping analyses were conducted by utilizing PROCESS Macro model 4 in SPSS software, and the results showed that the mediator variable fully mediates the link between the predictor and outcome variables. In other words, the direct effect of internal locus of control on academic procrastination was no longer significant when controlling for classroom engagement. Further discussion, implications and suggestions were presented at the end of the article