A Robust Wearable Point-of-Care CNT-Based Strain Sensor for Wirelessly Monitoring Throat-Related Illnesses

Point-of-care testing (POC) has the ability to detect chronic and infectious diseases early or at the time of occurrence and provide a state-of-the-art personalized healthcare system. Recently, wearable and flexible sensors have been employed to analyze sweat, glucose, blood, and human skin conditions. However, a flexible sensing system that allows for the real-time monitoring of throat-related illnesses, such as salivary parotid gland swelling caused by flu and mumps, is necessary. Here, for the first time, a wearable, highly flexible, and stretchable piezoresistive sensing patch based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is reported, which can record muscle expansion or relaxation in real-time, and thus act as a next-generation POC sensor. The patch offers an excellent gauge factor for in-plane stretching and spatial expansion with low hysteresis. The actual extent of muscle expansion is calculated and the gauge factor for applications entailing volumetric deformations is redefined. Additionally, a bluetooth-low-energy system that tracks muscle activity in real-time and transmits the output signals wirelessly to a smartphone app is utilized. Numerical calculations verify that the low stress and strain lead to excellent mechanical reliability and repeatability. Finally, a dummy muscle is inflated using a pneumatic-based actuator to demonstrate the application of the affixed wearable next-generation POC sensor.     

Multilayer Partially Homomorphic Encryption Text Steganography (MLPHE-TS): A Zero Steganography Approach

Wireless Personal Communications - This paper presents a Multilayer Partially Homomorphic Encryption Text Steganography, an invisible approach for covert communication. Existing text-based schemes...     

Robust Multimodal Biometric System Based on Feature Level Fusion of Optimiseddeepnet Features

Wireless Personal Communications - Multimodal biometric systems combine feature knowledge from multiple traits to overcome shortcomings of unimodal systems. However, most of the traditional...     

Design and Implementation of Optical Signal Reinstatement Technique for High DPSK RZ Transceiver Scheme

Wireless Personal Communications - Optical signal reinstatement (OSR) is a common technique used in high-speed communication systems. OSR can be achieved using various techniques such as;...     

Extracellular recordings from patterned neuronal networks using planar microelectrode arrays

Neuronal cell networks have been reconstructed on planar microelectrode arrays (MEAs) from dissociated hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Microcontact printing (microCP) and a photoresist-liftoff method were used to selectively localize poly-L-lysine (PLL) on the surface of MEAs. Haptotaxis led to the organization of the neurons into networks localized adjacent to microelectrodes. Various grids of PLL with 2-25-microm-wide lines spaced by 50-200 microm with 15-25-microm nodes at intersection points were used to guide cell body attachment and neurite outgrowth. Bursting activity with spike amplitude attenuation was observed, and multichannel recordings detected instances of coincident firing activity. Finally, we present here an extracellular recording from a approximately 2 microm bundle of guided neurites.     

Convergence behavior of the first-order time-delay digital tanlockloop

Convergence behavior of the previously proposed time-delay digital tanlock loop (TDTL) is analyzed. The approach is built on the actual number of steps required for the convergence of the phase error to its steady-state value. Unlike the first-order conventional digital tanlock loop (CDTL), the Lipschitz bound of TDTL is not a tight limit for the actual convergence time, especially for higher values of the absolute difference between the initial and the steady-state phase errors. For a frequency step input, the first-order TDTL locks faster than CDTL under suitable arrangement of the loop parameters     

Intelligibility improvements using binaural diverse sub-bandprocessing applied to speech corrupted with automobile noise

The paper reports on experiments assessing the capability of a diverse processing, multi-microphone sub-band adaptive signal processing scheme for improving the intelligibility of speech corrupted with automobile noise. Results from formal listening tests demonstrate a significant improvement in the intelligibility and quality of the processed speech. Spoken digits corrupted with automobile noise at a low and a high signal-to-noise ratio were used with two commercial speech recognisers. The results obtained with the recognisers did not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement due to processing in sub-bands     

A CMOS digitally programmable filter technique for VLSI applications

A novel technique for designing analog CMOS integrated filters is proposed. The technique uses digitally controlled current amplifiers (DCCAs) to provide precise frequency and/or gain characteristics that can be digitally tuned over a wide range. This paper provides an overview of the possibilities of using the DCCA as the core element in programmable filters. In mixed analog/digital systems, the digital tuning feature of the proposed approach allows direct interfacing with the digital signal processing (DSP) part. Basic building blocks such as digitally programmable amplifiers, integrators, and simulated active inductors are given. Systematic designs of second-order filters are presented. Fully differential architectures of the proposed circuits are developed. Experimental results obtained from 0.5 μm standard CMOS chips are provided.     

The use of elastography to measure quality characteristics of pork semimembranosus muscle

The objectives of this study were to determine if ultrasonic strain image analysis could estimate pork eating quality parameters (such as fresh color, drip loss, and Warner/Bratzler shear). Intact semimembranosus (SM) muscles (cap off) were analyzed for ultimate pH (pH(ult)). Forty-five SM muscles were selected from the larger allotment of fresh hams over a 3-week period. The SM muscles were selected based on high and low pH(ult) in an attempt to represent a wide range of pork quality. Ultrasonic strain images were obtained perpendicular to the SM muscle fibers of an 8-cm cube. Radio-frequency data from each SM were obtained from a field-of-view (FOV) of 40×30 mm(2) and digitized for each compression step. Tissue displacements were computed for each compression step. Tissue strains were computed from displacement data located in the FOV representing areas of harder and softer muscle tissue and converted to gray scale images at 256 levels. Tissue irregularity of hardness and softness was measured using Fractal dimension and Haralicks parameters. Twenty-one Fractal dimension (FR) parameters, at two neighborhood distances (N), from each strain image and nine Haralick's (HAR) textural parameters (inter-pixel distance=1) were analyzed for each image. The variable FR4N4 had a -0.279 correlation with SM ultimate pH (p<0.10); FR6N8 correlated to WB shear force at 0.325 (p<0.05); and FR21N8 had a correlation coefficient of 0.364 with intramuscular fat (p<0.01). Linear regression equations generated from FRN and HAR parameters for intramuscular fat (R(2)=0.468), Warner/Bratzler shear (R(2)=0.360), and 30 h drip loss (R(2)=0.208). Although elastographic measurement was significantly correlated to shear (p<0.05), a better understanding of physical meat texture is necessary before elastography can be used to identify superior quality pork.     

A Novel Refined Track Initiation Algorithm for Group Targets Based on Group Model

Traditional refined track initiation methods for group targets have mistakes or loss of tracks when tracking irregular motions, for the reason that they rely on a stable relative position of group members. To solve the problem, a group dynamic model was introduced for proposing a new initiation algorithm and its whole framework. We made a self-adaptive improvement of the group separation on various group radii. After the pre-association of these groups, a state equation derived from the model was used for predictions of group members. Then a relational matrix was defined for refined data associations. Finally tracks were validated by logic-based method. Particular scenarios and Monte Carlo simulations showed that, compared with algorithms based on relative position, this algorithm has better performance on the adaptability to changes of a group structure and the correctness of initiation.