An integrated intelligent computing model for the interpretation of EMG based neuromuscular diseases

Intelligent computing system (ICS) and knowledge-based system (KBS) have been widely used in the detection and interpretation of EMG (electromyography) based diseases. Heuristic-based detection methods of EMG parameters for a particular disease have also been reported in the literature but little effort has been made by researchers to combine rule-based reasoning (RBR) and case-based reasoning of KBS, and ANN (artificial neural nets) of ICS. Integrating the methods in KBS and ICS improves the computational and reasoning efficiency of the problem-solving strategy. We have developed an integrated model of CBR and RBR for generating cases, and ANN for matching cases for the interpretation and diagnosis of neuromuscular diseases. We have hierarchically structured the neuromuscular diseases in terms of their physio-pyscho (muscular, cognitive and psychological) parameters and EMG based parameters (amplitude, duration, phase etc.). Cumulative confidence factor is computed at different node from lowest to highest level of hierarchal structure in the process of diagnosis of the neuromuscular diseases. The diseases considered are Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Polymyostits, Endocrine myopathy, Metabolic myopathy, Neuropathy, Poliomyletis and Myasthenia gravis. The basic objective of this work is to develop an integrated model of RBR, CBR and ANN in which RBR is used to hierarchically correlate the sign and symptom of the disease and also to compute cumulative confidence factor (CCF) of the diseases. CBR is used for diagnosing the neuromuscular diseases and to find the relative importance of sign and symptoms of a diseases to other diseases and ANN is used for matching process in CBR.     

Semantic web reasoners and languages

Semantic web reasoners and languages enable the semantic web to function. Some of the latest reasoning models developed in the last few years are: DLP, FaCT, RACER, Pellet, MSPASS, CEL, Cerebra Engine, QuOnto, KAON2, HermiT and others. Some software tools such as Protégé, Jena and others also have been developed, which provide inferencing as well as ontology development and management environments. These reasoners usually differ in their inference procedures, supporting logic, completeness of reasoning, expressiveness and implementation languages. Various semantic web languages with increasing expressive power continue to be developed for describing web services. We survey the some of the more recent languages like OWL-S (Ontology Web Language-Schema), WSML (Web Service Modeling Language), SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) and others that have been tested in early use. We also survey semantic web reasoners and their relationship to these languages.     

Creep fracture in Al-SiC metal-matrix composites

Creep fracture behaviour of pure aluminium-matrix composites with 10–30 vol% SiC particulates at 623 K is reported. A comparison of tensile and compression creep data shows the existence of a transition stress. Above this transition stress no steady state creep is observed in tension. This transition stress is related to a transition from intergranular to transgranular fracture. The origin of transition stress is perhaps associated with the diffusional relaxation of stress concentration at the matrix/particle interface by lattice diffusion. The intergranular creep fracture of composites appears to be similar to that of unreinforced aluminium and it is power-law creep controlled. The transgranular creep fracture occurs by void nucleation and growth. The nucleation strain for voids is quite small and hence the tertiary stage starts before the end of the primary stage. The ductile fracture models overestimate the strain to fracture and do not predict the observed stress dependence of strain to fracture.     

Application of polymeric flocculant for enhancing settling of the pond ash particles and water drainage from hydraulically stowed pond ash

Delayed settling of the ash particles and poor drainage of water from the pond ash are the major problems faced during the hydraulic stowing of pond ash. In this study the effect of polymeric flocculant on settling of the ash particles and drainage of water during pond ash stowing are investigated. In addition, the parameters, viz. drainage and absorption of water during pond ash stowing are quantified by stowing a mine goaf model with pond ash slurries of five different concentrations added with and without flocculant. The study revealed that addition of only 5 × 10^?6 of Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose (Na-CMC) flocculant with the pond ash slurries during stowing offers best result in terms of quicker settling of the ash particles and enhanced water drainage from the hydraulically stowed pond ash. Besides, it resulted in drainage of more than 85% of the total water used in the initial 45 min of stowing. The improvement in drainage is caused due to coagulation and flocculation of the pond ash particles because of charge neutralization and particle–particle bridging. This study may provide a basis for estimating the drainage and absorption of water during the real pond ash stowing operation in underground mines.     

Two-stage quasi-class-E power amplifier in GaN HEMT technology

This letter presents a two-stage quasi-class-E monolithic microwave integrated circuit power amplifier at 2.0GHz, which is based on field-plated GaN high electron mobility transistor technology. It consists of a driver stage and a power stage. The circuit schematic is described. The amplifier achieves an output power of 37.5dBm into a 50-/spl Omega/ load, a power added efficiency (PAE) of 50%, and a gain of 18.2dB. A power density of 5.6W/mm is achieved.     

Interagent communication and synchronization support in the DaAgent mobile agent-based computing system

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of interagent communication and synchronization models in the DaAgent mobile-agent based computing system. Based on the requirements of some sample Internet computing applications, eight system-level models of interagent communication and synchronization are proposed. A new synchronization mechanism called location synchronization that is relevant for interacting mobile agents is also proposed. This paper evaluates the eight models based on their utility, performance, level of communication and synchronization support, and applicability in the Internet computing environment. A prototype implementation and detailed performance evaluation of these models based on two interacting, multiagent applications are also presented.     

Nanomembrane‐Based,Thermal‐Transport Biosensor for Living Cells

Knowledge of materials' thermal‐transport properties, conductivity and diffusivity, is crucial for several applications within areas of biology, material science and engineering. Specifically, a microsized, flexible, biologically integrated thermal transport sensor is beneficial to a plethora of applications, ranging across plants physiological ecology and thermal imaging and treatment of cancerous cells, to thermal dissipation in flexible semiconductors and thermoelectrics. Living cells pose extra challenges, due to their small volumes and irregular curvilinear shapes. Here a novel approach of simultaneously measuring thermal conductivity and diffusivity of different materials and its applicability to single cells is demonstrated. This technique is based on increasing phonon‐boundary‐scattering rate in nanomembranes, having extremely low flexural rigidities, to induce a considerable spectral dependence of the bandgap‐emission over excitation‐laser intensity. It is demonstrated that once in contact with organic or inorganic materials, the nanomembranes' emission spectrally shift based on the material's thermal diffusivity and conductivity. This NM‐based technique is further applied to differentiate between different types and subtypes of cancer cells, based on their thermal‐transport properties. It is anticipated that this novel technique to enable an efficient single‐cell thermal targeting, allow better modeling of cellular thermal distribution and enable novel diagnostic techniques based on variations of single‐cell thermal‐transport properties.     

Microstructure and steady state creep in Ti-24Al-11Nb

The steady state creep behaviour of the two-phase Ti₃Al-based alloy, Ti-24Al-11Nb, has been examined as a function of microstructure at temperatures ranging from 798 to 998 K and stress levels ranging from 30 to 400 MPa. Three microstructural conditions corresponding to 90% equiaxed ₂, 40% equiaxed ₂, and 100% lath ₂ structures have been studied. A low-stress Coble creep regime has been identified, with the lath ₂ structure showing the greates creep resistance in this regime. The lath ₂ structure is also stronger in the dislocation creep regime. The creep strength of this ordered alloy is shown to derive from frequency factors for diffusion, which are about two to three orders of magnitude lower than those for disordered alloys. Activation energies for creep in both the diffusional and dislocation creep domains are similar to values obtained in disordered alloys.     

Inclusion dynamics hybrid automata

Hybrid systems are dynamical systems with the ability to describe mixed discrete-continuous evolution of a wide range of systems. Consequently, at first glance, hybrid systems appear powerful but recalcitrant, neither yielding to analysis and reasoning through a purely continuous-time modeling as with systems of differential equations, nor open to inferential processes commonly used for discrete state-transition systems such as finite state automata. A convenient and popular model, called hybrid automata, was introduced to model them and has spurred much interest on its tractability as a tool for inference and model checking in a general setting. Intuitively, a hybrid automaton is simply a “finite-state” automaton with each state augmented by continuous variables, which evolve according to a set of well-defined continuous laws, each specified separately for each state. This article investigates both the notion of hybrid automaton and the model checking problem over such a structure. In particular, it relates first-order theories and analysis results on multivalued maps and reduces the bounded reachability problem for hybrid automata whose continuous laws are expressed by inclusions (x′f(x,t)) to a decidability problem for first-order formulæ over the reals. Furthermore, the paper introduces a class of hybrid automata for which the reachability problem can be decided and shows that the problem of deciding whether a hybrid automaton belongs to this class can be again decided using first-order formulæ over the reals. Despite the fact that the bisimulation quotient for this class of hybrid automata can be infinite, we show that our techniques permit effective model checking for a nontrivial fragment of CTL.