Medical technology development: limiting regulation

The medical technology industry is one of the most innovative sectors of the US economy. The paper considers how the US federal government, in a variety of roles as promoter, protector and payer, is involved in every stage of the innovative process for medical technology. It discusses the influence of government policies on medical innovation     

Cognitive impenetrability of memory for orientation.

This research produced evidence that an aspect of visual long-term memory—memory for lateral orientation of pictures—is constrained by a viewer-centered or egocentric reference frame. Subjects in Experiment 1 verbally encoded and then verbally recalled the locations of objects within scenic pictures. Recall of locations in terms of left-right directions (using a viewer-centered frame) exceeded recall of locations in terms of relative proximities to features of the room (using an environmental frame), even if the relative proximities had been verbalized at input. Subjects in Experiment 2 viewed half of a list of pictures directly and the remainder, reflected in a mirror. They then took a test in which they classified old pictures—all viewed directly— as "same-orientation" or "reversed." Performance was much better with a viewer-centered definition of same orientation (Does the picture appear the same way around?) than with an environmental definition (Is the picture the same way around on the screen?), even with forewarning of an environmental orientation test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Management of the patient with minor traumatic brain injury

Staff in the accident and emergency department and critical care unit are often confronted with patients who have sustained life-threatening injuries. In such situations the symptoms of a minor traumatic brain injury (MTBI) may be missed. It is important that, when the physical symptoms begin to subside, nurses are aware of the symptoms of MTBI and respond accordingly. A post-concussion syndrome may develop 2 weeks to 2 months after a MTBI. This syndrome can affect the patient's ability to perform the usual activities of living. This article defines MTBI, describes the symptoms encountered in patients with MTBI, and outlines the pathophysiology, clinical findings, treatment and nursing interventions.     

Implementation of Envelope Analysis on a Wireless Condition Monitoring System for Bearing Fault Diagnosis

 Envelope analysis is an effective method for characterizing impulsive vibrations in wired condition monitoring (CM) systems. This paper depicts the implementation of envelope analysis on a wireless sensor node for obtaining a more convenient and reliable CM system. To maintain CM performances under the constraints of resources available in the cost effective Zigbee based wireless sensor network (WSN), a low cost cortex-M4F microcontroller is employed as the core processor to implement the envelope analysis algorithm on the sensor node. The on-chip 12 bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) working at 10 kHz sampling rate is adopted to acquire vibration signals measured by a wide frequency band piezoelectric accelerometer. The data processing flow inside the processor is optimized to satisfy the large memory usage in implementing fast Fourier transform (FFT) and Hilbert transform (HT). Thus, the envelope spectrum can be computed from a data frame of 2048 points to achieve a frequency resolution acceptable for identifying the characteristic frequencies of different bearing faults. Experimental evaluation results show that the embedded envelope analysis algorithm can successfully diagnose the simulated bearing faults and the data transmission throughput can be reduced by at least 95% per frame compared with that of the raw data, allowing a large number of sensor nodes to be deployed in the network for real time monitoring.     

Digital design and time on device; how aesthetic experience can help to illuminate the psychological impact of living in a digital culture

ABSTRACT

Aesthetic techniques are increasingly used by marketeers to create enticing digital products. In this paper, I work with the aesthetic experiences of one audience group to consider the psychological impact of living in a culture where digital devices are deliberately designed to influence behaviour. I argue that aesthetic encounters can help with understanding the impact of the interplay between visual stimulus, affect and digital culture, in ways that may support situated understandings of mental distress in a digital age. I show how audiences respond to the artist-led research project Are We All Addicts Now? arguing that they generate ideas connected to submersion and being overwhelmed as a means of reporting on their own personal experiences of living in a digital culture that seeks to influence behaviour. The findings may have value for designers, curators and artists invested in understanding the experiential impact of digital devices.     

Depolarization measurements of an integrating sphere

Mueller-matrix polarimetry performed in the visible and near IR indicates that an integrating sphere acts as an ideal depolarizer to the 0.5% accuracy of the polarimeter. The integrating sphere emits unpolarized light regardless of the incident polarization state.     

Production of perovskite-like La1−xCaxMnO3+δ ferromagnetic thin films by electrochemical reduction

Ferromagnetic and perovskite-like thin films (<1m) of La1–xCaxMnO3+ have been routinely prepared by heat treatment of an amorphous La–Ca–Mn precursor. The precursor was electrodeposited cathodically in the absence of oxygen and water onto polished silver substrates from a nonaqueous solution of the components' nitrates. Analysis by X-ray diffraction and SQUID magnetometry shows these materials exhibit the appropriate structural and magnetic phases indicative of colossal magnetoresistance.     

Toward Practical Smile Detection

Machine learning approaches have produced some of the highest reported performances for facial expression recognition. However, to date, nearly all automatic facial expression recognition research has focused on optimizing performance on a few databases that were collected under controlled lighting conditions on a relatively small number of subjects. This paper explores whether current machine learning methods can be used to develop an expression recognition system that operates reliably in more realistic conditions. We explore the necessary characteristics of the training data set, image registration, feature representation, and machine learning algorithms. A new database, GENKI, is presented which contains pictures, photographed by the subjects themselves, from thousands of different people in many different real-world imaging conditions. Results suggest that human-level expression recognition accuracy in real-life illumination conditions is achievable with machine learning technology. However, the data sets currently used in the automatic expression recognition literature to evaluate progress may be overly constrained and could potentially lead research into locally optimal algorithmic solutions.