Intraoperative neurological monitoring

Intraoperative neurological monitoring (INM) is the evaluation of the nervous system within the operating room (OR) environment. In this paper, the INM system is tested in a clinical setting in comparison with conventional somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) monitoring. The study results demonstrate the capability of the INM system in extracting clearer and more stable SEP signals. The high SNR of SEP signals collected in various clinical environments, including the OR, makes the INM system a robust platform for continuous monitoring. While the current use of EP monitoring is limited to intermittent analysis by a highly trained clinical neurophysiologist, the authors believe in changing this paradigm by developing continuous monitoring systems, such as the INM system, capable of automated quantitative EP analysis. This noninvasive monitoring modality will allow for a wider range of use in clinical practice. Based on volunteer and clinical patient studies, the INM monitoring system demonstrates much greater reliability and accuracy via the artifact rejection and denoising strategies. It provides more strategic filtering options for different situations under which the clinical SEP response signal could be greatly contaminated and distorted. Furthermore, the INM system offers a promising approach to signal extraction in real-time monitoring during SEP research.     

Dehulling of canola by hydrothermal treatments

Hydrothermal pretreatments for loosening the hull of Westar canola (Brassica napus L.) to promote dehulling of the seeds were investigated. The samples tested had on average 14.5% hull on a mass basis. Conditioning treatments involved soaking the seeds in distilled water or exposing the seeds to saturated steam. The moistened seed was treated with one of the following drying methods: unheated-air drying, infrared drying, and fluidized-bed drying. The dried grain was milled in an abrasive dehuller to break the hulls loose. The hulls were removed from the mix by aspiration. The treated seeds yielded a minimum of 11.4% to a maximum of 14.9% of the seed mass as the hull fraction. Nontreated seeds yielded 9.4% of the seed mass in hull fraction after abrasive dehulling and aspiration. Among treatments, raising the moisture content of the whole seed from 6 to 15% by exposure to steam, followed by drying in a fluidized bed, resulted in the maximum percent dehulling efficiency. The hull fraction contained about 24% crude fiber, 18% oil, and 18% protein on a dry-mass basis.     

A Deep Learning Approach to Detection and Mitigation of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks in High Availability Intelligent Transport Systems

Mobile Networks and Applications - In the era of Internet of Things (IoT) powered by 5G technologies, Automobile Industry is headed towards a revolution. In Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS),...     

Pruning 2-Connected Graphs

Given an undirected graph G with edge costs and a specified set of terminals, let the density of any subgraph be the ratio of its cost to the number of terminals it contains. If G is 2-connected, does it contain smaller 2-connected subgraphs of density comparable to that of?G? We answer this question in the affirmative by giving an algorithm to pruneG and find such subgraphs of any desired size, incurring only a logarithmic factor increase in density (plus a small additive term). We apply our pruning techniques to give algorithms for two NP-Hard problems on finding large 2-vertex-connected subgraphs of low cost; no previous approximation algorithm was known for either problem. In the k-2VC problem, we are given an undirected graph G with edge costs and an integer k; the goal is to find a minimum-cost 2-vertex-connected subgraph of G containing at least k vertices. In the Budget-2VC problem, we are given a graph G with edge costs, and a budget B; the goal is to find a 2-vertex-connected subgraph H of G with total edge cost at most B that maximizes the number of vertices in H. We describe an O(log?nlog?k) approximation for the k-2VC problem, and a bicriteria approximation for the Budget-2VC problem that gives an $O(\frac{1}{\epsilon}\log^{2} n)$ approximation, while violating the budget by a factor of at most 2+ε.     

Current Understanding of Structure–Processing–Property Relationships in BaTiO3–Bi(M)O3 Dielectrics

As part of a continued push for high permittivity dielectrics suitable for use at elevated operating temperatures and/or large electric fields, modifications of BaTiO₃ with Bi(M)O₃, where M represents a net‐trivalent B‐site occupied by one or more species, have received a great deal of recent attention. Materials in this composition family exhibit weakly coupled relaxor behavior that is not only remarkably stable at high temperatures and under large electric fields, but is also quite similar across various identities of M. Moderate levels of Bi content (as much as 50 mol%) appear to be crucial to the stability of the dielectric response. In addition, the presence of significant Bi reduces the processing temperatures required for densification and increases the required oxygen content in processing atmospheres relative to traditional X7R‐type BaTiO₃‐based dielectrics. Although detailed understanding of the structure–processing–property relationships in this class of materials is still in its infancy, this article reviews the current state of understanding of the mechanisms underlying the high and stable values of both relative permittivity and resistivity that are characteristic of BaTiO₃‐Bi(M)O₃ dielectrics as well as the processing challenges and opportunities associated with these materials.     

A Novel Approach to Model Threshold Voltage and Subthreshold Current of Graded-Doped Junctionless-Gate-All-Around (GD-JL-GAA) MOSFETs

Silicon - This present article interprets the analytical models of central channel potential, the threshold voltage, and subthreshold current for Graded-Doped Junctionless-Gate-All-Around...     

Phase Transformations in Third Generation Gamma Titanium Aluminides: Ti-45Al-(5, 10) Nb-0.2B-0.2C

Third generation γ-titanium aluminides with nominal compositions Ti–45Al–5Nb–0.2B–0.2C and Ti–45Al–10Nb–0.2B–0.2C were investigated to identify the phase transformation and their morphological stability with temperature. Electron microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry were employed for the characterization of phases and for recording the corresponding transformations, respectively. It has been inferred that the order–disorder transformation temperatures α₂ → α increased with increasing Niobium (Nb), while the α-transus temperature decreases. The stability of the microstructure for both alloys with temperature were also investigated. Mass change measured for the heating rates 20 °C s⁻¹ and 30 °C s⁻¹ reveals that the alloy Ti–45Al–10Nb–0.2–0.2C shows stability up to 1100 °C, and the alloy Ti–45Al–5Nb–0.2B–0.2C is stable up to 900 °C. The orientation relationship between the phases indicates that with the change in shape of the α phase from lamellar to equiaxed, it deviates from the Blackburn orientation relationship.

     

Three-dimensional computer model of the heart: fibrillation induced by extrastimulation

We present a three-dimensional (3D) computer model that simulates electrical activity in the heart during fibrillation. A real dog heart is discretized to form 1473 interconnected cubic elements. The model exhibits normal activation and recovery from pacing. Five or more extrastimuli induce a self-sustaining tachyarrhythmia that soon degenerates into a fibrillatory rhythm. The extrastimuli increase the excitability of the myocardial cell population. The result is a rapid re-excitation of cells that allows for only a partial recovery of cell action potential. This suggests that a dispersion of refractory states of the cell population is the cause of fibrillation in this computer model.     

VLSI Potentiostat Array With Oversampling Gain Modulation for Wide-Range Neurotransmitter Sensing

A 16-channel current-measuring very large-scale integration (VLSI) sensor array system for highly sensitive electrochemical detection of electroactive neurotransmiters like dopamine and nitric-oxide is presented. Each channel embeds a current integrating potentiostat within a switched-capacitor first-order single-bit delta-sigma modulator implementing an incremental analog-to-digital converter. The duty-cycle modulation of current feedback in the delta-sigma loop together with variable oversampling ratio provide a programmable digital range selection of the input current spanning over six orders of magnitude from picoamperes to microamperes. The array offers 100-fA input current sensitivity at 3.4-muW power consumption per channel. The operation of the 3 mm times3 mm chip fabricated in 0.5-mum CMOS technology is demonstrated with real-time multichannel acquisition of neurotransmitter concentration