The effect of handle friction and inward or outward torque on maximum axial push force

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship among friction, applied torque, and axial push force on cylindrical handles. BACKGROUND: We have earlier demonstrated that participants can exert greater contact force and torque in an "inward" movement of the hand about the long axis of a gripped cylinder (wrist flexion/forearm supination) than they can in an "outward" hand movement. METHOD: Twelve healthy participants exerted anteriorly directed maximum push forces along the long axis of aluminum and rubber handles while applying deliberate inward or outward torques, no torque (straight), and an unspecified (preferred) torque. RESULTS: Axial push force was 12% greater for the rubber handle than for the aluminum handle. Participants exerted mean torques of 1.1, 0.3, 2.5, and -2.0 Nm and axial push forces of 94, 85, 75, and 65 N for the preferred, straight, inward, and outward trials, respectively. Left to decide for themselves, participants tended to apply inward torques, which were associated with increased axial push forces. CONCLUSION: Axial push force was limited by hand-handle coupling--not the whole body's push strength. Participants appeared to intuitively know that the application of an inward torque would improve their maximum axial push force. Axial push forces were least when a deliberate torque was requested, probably because high levels of torque exertions interfered with the push. APPLICATION: A low-friction handle decreases maximum axial push force. It should be anticipated that people will apply inward torque during maximum axial push.     

Influence of wall charge distribution on time lag of address discharge in AC plasma display panels

The influence of wall charge distribution on the time lag of address discharge in an AC plasma display panel is investigated using two different reset waveforms: one (typical reset) induces both face and surface discharges and the other (TR reset) induces face discharges only. The measured formative time lag and statistical time lag of address discharge for TR were 21–31 ns and 31–74 ns shorter than the one for the typical reset, respectively. The TR reset resulted in much less increase of statistical time lag than the typical reset when the reset-to-address time interval was increased, and 70 ns smaller deviation of the statistical time lag among different color cells. Calculations show that the TR reset forms a much smoother wall charge profile, which is less susceptible to cell parameter variations, than the typical reset. The observed differences in the time lags of address discharge between different scan lines and color cells are strongly correlated to the differences of the wall charge profile, indicating that a smooth wall charge profile formed by the reset using face discharges only reduces the time lag of address discharge and minimizes the susceptibility of address discharge to cell parameter variation.     

Portable and Efficient Implementation of CRYSTALS-Kyber Based on WebAssembly

With the rapid development of quantum computers capable of realizing Shor’s algorithm, existing public key-based algorithms face a significant security risk. Crystals-Kyber has been selected as the only key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) algorithm in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) competition. In this study, we present a portable and efficient implementation of a Crystals-Kyber post-quantum KEM based on WebAssembly (Wasm), a recently released portable execution framework for high-performance web applications. Until now, most Kyber implementations have been developed with native programming languages such as C and Assembly. Although there are a few previous Kyber implementations based on JavaScript for portability, their performance is significantly lower than that of implementations based on native programming languages. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a portable and efficient Kyber implementation to secure web applications in the quantum computing era. Our Kyber software is based on JavaScript and Wasm to provide portability and efficiency while ensuring quantum security. Namely, the overall software is written in JavaScript, and the performance core parts (secure hash algorithm-3-based operations and polynomial multiplication) are written in Wasm. Furthermore, we parallelize the number theoretic transform (NTT)-based polynomial multiplication using single instruction multiple data (SIMD) functionality, which is available in Wasm. The three steps in the NTT-based polynomial multiplication have been parallelized with Wasm SIMD intrinsic functions. Our software outperforms the latest reference implementation of Kyber developed in JavaScript by ×4.02 (resp. ×4.32 and ×4.1), ×3.42 (resp. ×3.52 and ×3.44), and ×3.41 (resp. ×3.44 and ×3.38) in terms of key generation, encapsulation, and decapsulation on Google Chrome (resp. Firefox, and Microsoft Edge). As far as we know, this is the first software implementation of Kyber with Wasm technology in the web environment.     

Android IoT Lifelog System and Its Application to Motion Inference

In social science, health care, digital therapeutics, etc., smartphone data have played important roles to infer users’ daily lives. However, smartphone data collection systems could not be used effectively and widely because they did not exploit any Internet of Things (IoT) standards (e.g., oneM2M) and class labeling methods for machine learning (ML) services. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel Android IoT lifelog system complying with oneM2M standards to collect various lifelog data in smartphones and provide two manual and automated class labeling methods for inference of users’ daily lives. The proposed system consists of an Android IoT client application, an oneM2M-compliant IoT server, and an ML server whose high-level functional architecture was carefully designed to be open, accessible, and internationally recognized in accordance with the oneM2M standards. In particular, we explain implementation details of activity diagrams for the Android IoT client application, the primary component of the proposed system. Experimental results verified that this application could work with the oneM2M-compliant IoT server normally and provide corresponding class labels properly. As an application of the proposed system, we also propose motion inference based on three multi-class ML classifiers (i.e., k nearest neighbors, Naive Bayes, and support vector machine) which were created by using only motion and location data (i.e., acceleration force, gyroscope rate of rotation, and speed) and motion class labels (i.e., driving, cycling, running, walking, and stilling). When compared with confusion matrices of the ML classifiers, the k nearest neighbors classifier outperformed the other two overall. Furthermore, we evaluated its output quality by analyzing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves with area under the curve (AUC) values. The AUC values of the ROC curves for all motion classes were more than 0.9, and the macro-average and micro-average ROC curves achieved very high AUC values of 0.96 and 0.99, respectively.     

Silver Nanoflower Decorated Graphene Oxide Sponges for Highly Sensitive Variable Stiffness Stress Sensors

Soft conductive materials should enable large deformation while keeping high electrical conductivity and elasticity. The graphene oxide (GO)‐based sponge is a potential candidate to endow large deformation. However, it typically exhibits low conductivity and elasticity. Here, the highly conductive and elastic sponge composed of GO, flower‐shaped silver nanoparticles (AgNFs), and polyimide (GO‐AgNF‐PI sponge) are demonstrated. The average pore size and porosity are 114 µm and 94.7%, respectively. Ag NFs have thin petals (8–20 nm) protruding out of the surface of a spherical bud (300–350 nm) significantly enhancing the specific surface area (2.83 m² g^?1). The electrical conductivity (0.306 S m^?1 at 0% strain) of the GO‐AgNF‐PI sponge is increased by more than an order of magnitude with the addition of Ag NFs. A nearly perfect elasticity is obtained over a wide compressive strain range (0–90%). The strain‐dependent, nonlinear variation of Young's modulus of the sponge provides a unique opportunity as a variable stiffness stress sensor that operates over a wide stress range (0–10 kPa) with a high maximum sensitivity (0.572 kPa^?1). It allows grasping of a soft rose and a hard bottle, with the minimal object deformation, when attached on the finger of a robot gripper.     

A new quadruple therapy for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori. Effect of pretreatment with omeprazole on the cure rate

The aim of the study was to assess the speech discrimination ability of postlingually deaf adults implanted with the Combi 40 cochlear implant and to compare the results with the postoperative data published for other devices. The postoperative open and closed set speech perception performance of 21 consecutive patients was tested using a standardized test battery comprising a number, monosyllable, sentence, consonant and vowel discrimination test as well as a rhyme test in the sound only condition. Mean values achieved for each test 1, 6 and 12 months after "switch on" were evaluated. The results demonstrate that all patients have a substantial benefit from their implant and show a continuous improvement in their speech perception abilities with increased device experience. The mean percentages of correct answers after 12 months were 93.4 for numbers, 44.6 for monosyllables, 78.5 for sentences, 67.6 for the rhyme test, 59.8 for vowel, and 67.3 for consonant discrimination. Preoperatively, the mean discrimination score for monosyllables was 0%. The speech discrimination scores of our patients were similar or higher than described for similar patient groups implanted with other devices. The high stimulation rate of the implant system using the continuous interleaved speech processing strategy as well as a deep atraumatic electrode insertion into the apicalmost regions of the scala tympani may be the reason for good performance.