Elderly Fall Detection by Sensitive Features Based on Image Processing and Machine Learning

The world’s elderly population is growing every year. It is easy to say that the fall is one of the major dangers that threaten them. This paper offers a Trained Model for fall detection to help the older people live comfortably and alone at home. The purpose of this paper is to investigate appropriate methods for diagnosing falls by analyzing the motion and shape characteristics of the human body. Several machine learning technologies have been proposed for automatic fall detection. The proposed research reported in this paper detects a moving object by using a background subtraction algorithm with a single camera. The next step is to extract the features that are very important and generally describe the human shape and show the difference between the human falls from the daily activities. These features are based on motion, changes in human shape, and oval diameters around the human and temporal head position. The features extracted from the human mask are eventually fed in to various machine learning classifiers for fall detection. Experimental results showed the efficiency and reliability of the proposed method with a fall detection rate of 81% that have been tested with UR Fall Detection dataset

Identification of genes encoding β-ketoadipate pathway enzymes in biodegradation of aromatic compounds by Aspergillus niger

Fungi, together with bacteria, are responsible for the degradation of aromatic compounds in the environment. The β-ketoadipate pathway is a common pathway for the cleavage of dihydroxylated aromatics such as catechol but while the bacterial enzymes for this pathway have been well-characterized, those from fungi have not. This pathway in bacteria includes two branches: one with six enzymes to convert catechol to acetyl coenzyme A and succinate, and the other with seven enzymes to catalyze the conversion of protocatechuate (3,4-dihydroxybenzoate) to the same products plus CO2. BLAST sequence comparisons identified genes in the Aspergillus niger genome that are likely to encode these enzymes. Aspergillus niger cDNA was used to amplify 12 of these genes, which were subsequently cloned using ligation-independent cloning into the pLATE11 vector and the resulting plasmids were tested for expression in E.coli BL21. Of these, 4 proteins were successfully expressed and then purified using a combination of column chromatography techniques. Assays of two of these proteins combined with UV analysis of reaction intermediates indicated that they encode β-carboxymuconate cyclase (NRRL3_02586) and β-carboxymuconolactone hydrolase/decarboxylase (NRRL3_01409) activities from the protocatechuate branch of the pathway. The β-carboxymuconolactone hydrolase/decarboxylase was shown to be a monomer and is the first such enzyme to which a sequence has been assigned. The other two proteins, encoded by NRRL3_10507 and NRRL3_04788, were active in assays for muconate isomerase and 3-oxoadipate enol lactone hydrolase, respectively, from the catechol branch of the pathway. Both enzymes were found to be dimers. In comparison, the bacterial muconate isomerase is a decameric enzyme with smaller subunits, while bacterial 3-oxoadipate enol lactone hydrolase is also dimeric. These data have resulted in the identification of molecular functions for four genes encoding key enzymes in aromatic degradation by A. niger

H Reflex Inhibition During Muscular Fatigue in Man

It is well known that the motoneurone firing rates associated with muscle fatigue are reduced during sustained voluntary contraction and it has been suggested that one reason for this decline might lie in reflex inhibition of motoneurone pools by muscle afferents sensitised by the fatiguing contraction. Garland and McComas (1990) demonstrated that fatigue of soleus causes a depression of its H reflex excitability. Soleus is difficult to fatigue and so the objective of the present study was to extend this work by examining the reflex effects of fatiguing contiactions in other muscles. The effects of fatiguing activity of the anterior tibial muscles on their own H reflex excitability and on the H reflex of their antagonist muscle, soleus also were examined. Alternatively quadriceps femoris muscle was fatigued to see how extensive the effect is. The main aim of this research was to determine the effects of fatiguing activity on the excitability of anterior tibial and soleus H reflexes. In addition, the differences between voluntary fatiguing activity and involuntary exercise by direct muscle stimulation were investigated. Experiments were performed on 50 neurologically normal subjects. Their ages ranged from 17 to 42 years. Subjects were seated in a semi-reclined position with their knee and ankle supported at 11

Safety-critical Policy Iteration Algorithm for Control under Model Uncertainty

Safety is an important aim in designing safe-critical systems. To design such systems, many policy iterative algorithms are introduced to find safe optimal controllers. Due to the fact that in most practical systems, finding accurate information from the system is rather impossible, a new online training method is presented in this paper to perform an iterative reinforcement learning based algorithm using real data instead of identifying system dynamics. Also, in this paper the impact of model uncertainty is examined on control Lyapunov functions (CLF) and control barrier functions (CBF) dynamic limitations. The Sum of Square program is used to iteratively find an optimal safe control solution. The simulation results which are applied on a quarter car model show the efficiency of the proposed method in the fields of optimality and robustness

Meta-heuristic Optimization Algorithms for Predicting the Scouring Depth Around Bridge Piers

An accurate estimation of bridge pier scour has been considered as one of the important parameters in designing of bridges. However, due to the numerous involved parameters and convolution of this phenomenon, many existing approaches cannot predict scour depth with an acceptable accuracy. Obtained results from the empirical relationships show that these relationships have low accuracy in determining the maximum scour depth and they need a high safety factor for many cases, which leads to uneconomic designs of bridges. To cover these disadvantages, three new models are provided to estimate the bridge pier scour using an adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system. The parameters of the system are optimized by using the colliding bodies optimization, enhanced colliding bodies optimization and vibrating particles system methods. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed methods, their results were compared with those of simple adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system and its improved versions by using the particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm as well as the empirical equations. Comparison of results showed that the new vibrating particles system based algorithm could find better results than other two ones. In addition, comparison of the results obtained by the proposed methods with those of the empirical relations confirmed the high performance of the new methods

The effect of forward head posture on cervical joint position sense

A number of studies have investigated the effect of age, trauma, disease and fatigue on cervical joint position sense. However, there is an absence in data regarding the role of posture on proprioception. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of Forward Head Posture (FHP) on cervical joint position sense. Twenty Forward Head Posture volunteers (14 women, 6 men), with the mean age of 23.94 (SD=3.26) years, and 17 normal head posture volunteers (8 women, 9 men) with the mean age of 23.50 (SD=2.68) years were asked to perform the Cervicocephalic relocation test (CRT) to the neutral head position (NHP). The aim of this test was to evaluate the participants' ability to relocate the head to neutral position after they actively rotated it to left and right sides. Three trials were performed for each rotation to the left and right. In order to assess cervical joint repositioning accuracy, Absolute, Constant and Variable errors were used. No significant difference in repositioning errors was observed between experimental and control group in absolute and constant errors (P>0.05); however, compared to normal group, Forward Head Posture subjects manifested significantly higher levels of variable errors (P<0.05). Forward Head Posture can significantly affect the positioning consistency of cervical proprioception. Nonetheless, further investigation on the effect of Forward Head Posture on cervical proprioception in altered situations is recommended.