Sound navigation aid system for the vision impaired

Visually impaired or blind people are someone who lost their ability to see. They usually depend on guide cane or guide dog to assist them navigates their environment. However, guide cane requires the blind to scan the surrounding manually with their hand while guide dog is expensive and has a short life span. There are many researches on creating better navigation aid for blind people. Instead of using vibration or alarm to notify the distance of the obstacles, this research proposed the application of sound notification for the blind. This system is developed using MATLAB r2010a with the integrated webcam of the laptop and a laser pointer. The laser pointer acts as a reference point so that object's distance can be calculated from the captured image by the webcam. This system manages to calculate distance for any color of object under any level of brightness condition during day and night time. It also possesses human head movement ability to turn left and right, up and down. This system managed to detect the obstacles up to a distance of 432 centimeters, which is sufficient to prevent the blind from bumping into the obstacles. The calculated distance is then converted to sound in order to notify the blind how far the object is away from them

A Review of MRI Acute Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation

Immediate treatment of a stroke can minimize long-term effects and even help reduce death risk. In the ischemic stroke cases, there are two zones of injury which are ischemic core and ischemic penumbra zone. The ischemic penumbra indicates the part that is located around the infarct core that is at risk of developing a brain infarction. Recently, various segmentation methods of infarct lesion from the MRI input images were developed and these methods gave a high accuracy in the extraction and detection of the infarct core. However, only some limited works have been reported to isolate the penumbra tissues and infarct core separately. The challenges exist in ischemic core identification are traditional approach prone to error, time-consuming and tedious for medical expert which could delay the treatment. In this paper, we study and analyse the segmentation algorithms for brain MRI ischemic of different categories. The focus of the review is mainly on the segmentation algorithms of infarct core with penumbra and infarct core only. We highlight the advantages and limitations alongside the discussion of the capabilities of these segmentation algorithms and its key challenges. The paper also devised a generic structure for automated stroke lesion segmentation. The performance of these algorithms was investigated by comparing different parameters of the surveyed algorithms. In addition, a new structure of the segmentation process for segmentation of penumbra is proposed by considering the challenges remains. The best accuracy for segmentation of infarct core and penumbra tissues is 82.1% whereas 99.1% for segmentation infarct core only. Meanwhile, the shortest average computational time recorded was 3.42 seconds for segmenting 10 slices of MR images. This paper presents an inclusive analysis of the discussed papers based on different categories of the segmentation algorithm. The proposed structure is important to enable a more robust and accurate assessment in clinical practice. This could be an opportunity for the medical and engineering sector to work together in designing a complete end-to-end automatic framework in detecting stroke lesion and penumbra

A Systematic Review on Promising Development of Palm Oil and its Nanofluid as a Biodegradable Oil Insulation Alternative

This review is conducted following a systematic approach by adopting Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline and using reliable and trustworthy databases, namely IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, and Scopus, with Google Scholar as an additional database. This review paper has divided into three subsections. The first subsection shows the major publications searching for palm oil-based as an alternative to biodegradable oil insulation. The second subsection discusses the research trends on palm oil replacing mineral oil. Finally, the third subsection discusses the development and progress of palm oil-based nanofluid as a future substitute for biodegradable oil insulation, as well as the types of analyzes conducted in the studies. This part contains eleven sub-subsections, namely (i) types of palm oil used, (ii) tests of palm oil as insulating liquid, (iii) properties of palm oil as insulating liquid, (iv) thermal aging, (v) water content, (vi) dissolved gas analysis (vii) selection of nanoparticles, (viii) preparation of palm oil-based nanofluids, (ix) characterization and stability of palm oil-based nanofluids, (x) analysis of electrical, physical and chemical properties, and (xi) current status of palm oil-based insulating liquid in Malaysia. This article highlights palm oil’s development, trends, and status and its nanofluid as a liquid insulating alternative in transformers. The properties and performance of the liquid are also reported in this article. The promising results, shortcomings, and imbalances between palm oil and other types of natural ester oils are discussed, and suggestions are made for future work worth exploring

Experimental implementation of direct-proportional length-based DNA computing for elevator scheduling problem

Previously, ideas and implementation methods for solving elevator scheduling problem using DNA computing method had been proposed. In this paper, results of biochemical experiments that have been carried out to realize the computing approach are presented. Every possible elevators travel path combinations are encoded by DNA sequences of length directly proportional to the elevator’s traveling time based on certain initial conditions such as elevators present and destination floors, and hall calls from a floor. Parallel overlap assembly is employed for an efficient initial pool generation of all possible travel path combinations and polymerase chain reaction for sequence amplification. Finally, gel electrophoresis is performed to separate the DNA sequence according to its length, and the shortest DNA sequence representing the elevator’s optimal path can thus be visualized from the gel electrophoresis image. The experimental result shows that the DNA computing approach can be wellsuited for solving such real-world problem of this type of nature

Application of Length-Based DNA Computing for an Elevator Scheduling Problem Application of Length-Based DNA Computing for an Elevator Scheduling Problem

This paper discussed the implementation ideas and experimental procedures to solve an engineering related combinatorial problem using DNA computing approach. An elevator scheduling problem is chosen as a benchmark where all the elevator travel paths are represented by DNA sequences of specific lengths that represent the elevators traveling time in a proportional way based on certain initial conditions such as elevator’s present and destination floors, and hall calls for an elevator from a floor. Parallel overlap assembly method is employed for initial pool generation for a more efficient generation of all possible elevator travel paths. The initial pool generation solution is then subjected to polymerase chain reaction and gel electrophoresis to extract the required optimal path. Experimental result obtained shows that DNA computing approach can be well-suited for solving such real-world application in the near future

Direct-proportional length-based DNA computing implementation for elevator scheduling problem

Implementation and experimental procedures to solve an elevator scheduling problem using direct-proportional length-based DNA computing approach are presented in this paper. All possible travel path combinations of the elevators are encoded by oligonucleotides of length directly proportional to the elevators traveling time based on certain initial conditions such as elevators present and destination floors, and hall calls from a floor. Parallel overlap assembly is employed for initial pool generation and polymerase chain reaction for amplification. Gel electrophoresis is then performed to separate all the generated travel paths by its oligonucleotides lengths. The gel electrophoresis image is then captured to visualize the required optimal path. Experimental result shows that DNA computing approach can be well-suited for solving such real-world problem of this type of natur

Experimental comparison of initial pool generation for direct-proportional length-based DNA computing

Previously, direct-proportional length-based DNA computing (DPLB-DNAC) for solving weighted graph problems such as the shortest path problem, has been proposed. After the initial pool generation, the initial pool is subjected to amplification, by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and finally, the output of the computation can be visualized by gel electrophoresis. In this paper, we give more attention to the initial pool generation of DPLB-DNAC. For this purpose, two kinds of initial pool generation methods, which are hybridization/ligation and parallel overlap assembly (POA) are evaluated. We found that both of the methods can be successfully employed to generate the initial pool generation of DPLB-DNAC, as supported by results of actual experiments. However, POA is more preferable than that of hybridization-ligation in term of population size and generation time