Ventricular arrhythmias classification and onset determination system

Accurately differentiating between ventricular fibrillation (VF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT) episodes is crucial in preventing potentially fatal missed interpretations that could lead to needless shock to the patients, resulting in damaging the heart. Apart from accurately classifying between VT and VF, the predetermination of the onset of the ventricular arrhythmias is also important in order to allow for more efficient monitoring of patients and can potentially save one’s life. Thus, this research intends to focus on developing a system called Classification and Onset Determination System (CODS) that is able to classify, track and monitor ventricular arrhythmias by using a method called Second Order Dynamic Binary Decomposition (SOD-BD) technique. Two significant characteristics (the natural frequency and the input parameter) were extracted from Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals that are provided by Physiobank database and analyzed to find the significant differences for each ventricular arrhythmia types and classify the ECGs accordingly (N, VT and VF). The outcome from these ECG extractions was also used to locate the onset of ventricular arrhythmia that is useful to predict the occurrence of the heart abnormalities. All the ECGs analysis, parameters extraction, classification techniques, and the CODS are developed using LabVIEW software

Potential and Electric Field Characteristics of Broken Porcelain Insulator

Overhead line insulators can be damaged for various reasons during their service life. Porcelain or glass insulators once damaged can affect the reliability of power system networks. This paper presents the study of voltage and electric characteristics along the surface of a broken porcelain insulator located in a string of 10 unit insulators. Three models of broken porcelain insulators were being proposed and the analysis results on voltage and electric characteristics were individually collected. The broken porcelain insulator with the most significant effect were then being investigated in the strings of 10 unit insulators. The finite element software of Quickfield was used to analyze the voltage and electric characteristics. Form the presented results, it is proven that the single porcelain insulators with broken shed at the nearest to the electrode terminal gave the most significant effect of voltage and electric field distribution pattern along the creepage distance. However, when this type of broken insulator was included in a string of 10 unit insulators, maximum average value of voltage achieved once the broken insulator was located at the HV terminal. Meanwhile, the highest electric field strength was recorded when the broken insulator was located in the middle of the string

A novel Multi-permittivity Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna for Wideband Applications

In this paper, a novel multi-permittivity cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for wideband application is presented. The multi-permittivity cylinder is formed by combining two different permittivity material sectors in such a way that each sector (with constant permittivity) is 90 degree apart. A direct microstrip line coupling terminated with T-stub at the open end is used to excite the multi-permittivity cylindrical dielectric resonator. The angular position of the multi sector dielectric resonator with respect to the longitudinal axis of the microstrip line and length of the additional strip at the open end of the feeding circuit is key parameters for wideband operation of the antenna. By optimizing all parameters of the proposed antenna, wideband impedance bandwidth of 56% (12.1 GHz - 21.65 GHz) is achieved. The average gain of the antenna throughout the bandwidth is 5.9 dB with good radiation properties in both E-plane and H-plane. A well matched simulation and experimental results show that the antenna is suitable for wideband applications

Pulsed Laser Heating of a Thermoelastic Medium with Two-temperature under Three-phase-lag Model

In this paper, the problem of the generalized thermoelastic medium for three different theories under the effect of a laser pulse and two-temperature is investigated. The Lord–Shulman (L-S), Green-Naghdi of type III (G-N III) and three-phase-lag (3PHL) theories are discussed with two-temperature. The normal mode analysis is used to obtain the analytical expressions of the displacement components, force stress, thermodynamic temperature and conductive temperature. The numerical results are given and presented graphically and the thermal force was applied. Comparisons are made with the results predicted by (3PHL), (G-N III) and (L-S) in the presence and absence of two-temperature. The boundary plane surface is heated by a non-Gaussian laser beam

Assessment of drought impacts on vegetation health: a case study in Kedah

Prolonged drought in the early of 2014 has caused Malaysia to experience water supply shortage which directly affects both health and growth of vegetation. Thus this study aims to assess the risk vegetation areas that were impacted during 2014's drought by integrating the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Normalized Differentiation Vegetation Index (NDVI) methods. These two methods were able to assess the risk areas for the vegetation by measuring its health and classifying them according to its severity while considering the rainfall reduction at the specific time and location. The results obtained from this study shows that the central and north west of Kedah was vulnerable to the occurrence of drought. Kedah was more impacted by the dry event during the northeast monsoon. This study is significant as a fundamental input for further research and as an alternative approach by the application of space technology

Cognitive function assessment in young adult using trail making and stroop tests

Cortical network between brain regions is one of the topics that being investigated by brain researchers. Methods that are used to investigate brain developments of cognitive function include Partial Directed Coherence (PDC) and the power spectrum of the brain activity. The purposes of this study were to determine the cortico-cortical functional connectivity between brain regions using PDC and to investigate the power spectrum of brain activity while performing cognitive function assessments. Twenty healthy young adults, age between 20 to 30 years old, were asked to perform two tasks/tests, Trail Making Test (TMTA-alphabet, TMTA-number, TMTB-mixed alphabets and numerical) and Stroop Task. An electroencephalogram (EEG) machine was used to record the brain signals, and the data were analyzed using PDC and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Our findings showed that not only frontal area but temporal and occipital area also generates information and the information was sent to various scalp location. Theta frequency was significantly increased at frontal area while gamma and high-gamma frequency bands were significantly increased at centroparieto-occipito-temporal regions. All of these areas are associated with cognitive function doing specific task

Analysis of Electric Field and Current Density on XLPE Insulator

Good condition and size of the insulator are important to ensure the excellent electric field and current density performance because of aging and degradation HVDC cable problem. At present, the existing insulator which is XLPE insulator that had been used does not meet the capabilities criteria of HVDC cable due to the problem in terms of the condition of the insulator which is the presence of a void in the insulator. A research had been made with Quickfield Software to calculate the electric field and current density in the XLPE insulator of HVDC cable. A void is created in the XLPE insulator by using Quickfield Software by varying diameter of void and distance of void from conductor. XLPE insulator is taken as main research object. The results show that largest diameter of void and nearest distance of void from conductor distorts highest electric field and lowest current density. Therefore, it is important to study both electric field and current density to ensure good capabilities and safety of HVDC cable

Standard time of import paperwork clearance department for sustainability organization performance in forwarding company

In order to achieve sustainable performance, it was emphasized for an organization for improvement of the standard performance. This paper attempts to propose a benchmark for the standard time to complete daily paperwork received at a forwarding company by using the define-measure-analyse-improve-control (DMAIC) approach. Results showed that the import clearance agent required 3 days or more to clear paperwork for duty or tax confirmation. The impact led to delayed shipment delivery, caused by customer dissatisfaction and company loss of trusts amongst customers. It was also found that that the number of paperwork received daily was 516, distributed among an average of 15 employees, from January to April 2018. Each employee received an average of 34 paperwork daily. The amount of paperwork received by each employee was at alarming level. The time required to complete paperwork for duty/tax confirmation were 3 days or more for most of the employees, which stood at 62%. Therefore, based on the results of the findings, the proposed benchmark of the standard time for paperwork clearance should not be more than 1 day to allow for same day delivery to the customers, as per the commitment promised by the company

Single channel electroencephalogram feature extraction based on probability density function for synchronous brain computer interface

Over recent years, there has been an explosive growth of interest in Electroencephalogram (EEG) based-Brain Computer Interface (BCI). Technically any architecture of a BCI is designed to have the ability of extracting out a set of features from brain signal. This paper demonstrated the extraction process based on Probability Density Function (PDF).A shared control scheme was developed between a mobile robot and subject. In general, subjects were required to synchronously imagine a star rotating and mind relaxation at specific time and direction. The imagination of a star would trigger a mobile robot suggesting that there is an object at certain direction. The mobile robot was then looking for a target based on probability value assigned to it. The result shows that 95 of theta activity was concentrated at target\x92s direction (during star imagination) and reduced when there is no target (during mind relaxation)