Functional electrical stimulation (FES) involves artificial activation of paralyzed muscles via implanted electrodes. FES has been successfully used to improve the ability of tetraplegics to perform upper limb movements important for daily activities. The variety of movements that can be generated by FES is, however, limited to a few movements such as hand grasp and release. Ideally, a user of an FES system would have effortless command over all of the degrees of freedom associated with upper limb movement. One reason that a broader range of movements has not been implemented is because of the substantial challenge associated with identifying the patterns of muscle stimulation needed to elicit additional movements. The first part of this dissertation addresses this challenge by using a probabilistic algorithm to estimate the patterns of muscle activity associated with a wide range of upper limb movements.A neuroprosthetic involves the control of an external device via brain activity. Neuroprosthetics have been successfully used to improve the ability of tetraplegics to perform tasks important for interfacing with the world around them. The variety of mechanisms which they can control is, however, limited to a few devices such as special computer typing programs. Because motor areas of the cerebral cortex are known to represent and regulate voluntary arm movements it might be possible to sense this activity with electrodes and decipher this information in terms of a moment-by-moment representation of arm trajectory. Indeed, several methods for decoding neural activity have been described, but these approaches are encumbered by technical difficulties. The second part of this dissertation addresses this challenge by using similar probabilistic methods to extract arm trajectory information from electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes that are already chronically deployed and widely used in human subjects.Ultimately, the two approaches developed as part of this dissertation might serve as a flexible controller for interfacing brain activity with functional electrical stimulation systems to realize a brain-controlled upper-limb neuroprosthetic system capable of eliciting natural movements. Such a system would effectively bypass the injured region of the spinal cord and reanimate the arm, greatly increasing movement capability and independence in paralyzed individuals.

This thesis proposes a test method for evaluating the perceived vibration which occurs at the driver's hand in automotive steering wheel interface. The objective of the research was to develop frequency weightings for quantifying the human perception of steering wheel hand-arm vibration. Family of frequency weightings were developed from equal sensation curves obtained from the psychophysical laboratory experimental tests. The previous literature suggests that the only internationally standardised frequency weighting Wh is not accurate to predict human perception of steering wheel hand-arm vibration (Amman et. al, 2005) because Wh was developed originally for health effects, not for the human perception. In addition, most of the data in hand-arm vibration are based upon responses from male subjects (Neely and Burström, 2006) and previous studies based only on sinusoidal stimuli. Further, it has been continuously suggested by researchers (Gnanasekarna et al., 2006; Morioka and Griffin, 2006; Ajovalasit and Giacomin, 2009) that only one weighting is not optimal to estimate the human perception at all vibrational magnitudes. In order to address these problems, the investigation of the effect of gender, body mass and the signal type on the equal sensation curves has been performed by means of psychophysical laboratory experimental tests. The test participants were seated on a steering wheel simulator which consists of a rigid frame, a rigid steering wheel, an automobile seat, an electrodynamic shaker unit, a power amplifier and a signal generator. The category-ratio Borg CR10 scale procedure was used to quantify the perceived vibration intensity. A same test protocol was used for each test and for each test subject. The first experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of gender using sinusoidal vibration with 40 test participants (20 males and 20 females). The results suggested that the male participants provided generally lower subjective ratings than the female participants. The second experiment was conducted using band-limited random vibration to investigate the effect of signal type between sinusoidal and band-limited random vibration with 30 test participants (15 males and 15 females). The results suggested that the equal sensation curves obtained using random vibration were generally steeper and deeper in the shape of the curves than those obtained using sinusoidal vibration. These differences may be due to the characteristics of random vibration which produce generally higher crest factors than sinusoidal vibration. The third experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of physical body mass with 40 test participants (20 light and 20 heavy participants) using sinusoidal vibration. The results suggested that the light participants produced generally higher subjective ratings than the heavy participants. From the results it can be suggested that the equal sensation curves for steering wheel rotational vibration differ mainly due to differences of body size rather than differences of gender. The final experiments was conducted using real road signals to quantify the human subjective response to representative driving condition and to use the results to define the selection method for choosing the adequate frequency weightings for the road signals by means of correlation analysis. The final experiment was performed with 40 test participants (20 light and 20 heavy participants) using 21 real road signals obtained from the road tests. From the results the hypothesis was established that different amplitude groups may require different frequency weightings. Three amplitude groups were defined and the frequency weightings were selected for each amplitude group. The following findings can be drawn from the research: • the equal sensation curves suggest a nonlinear dependency on both the frequency and the amplitude. • the subjective responses obtained from band-limited random stimuli were steeper and the deeper in the shape of the equal sensation curves than those obtained using sinusoidal vibration stimuli. • females provided higher perceived intensity values than the males for the same physical stimulus at most frequencies. • light test participants provided higher perceived intensity than the heavy test participants for the same physical stimulus at most frequencies. • the equal sensation curves for steering wheel rotational vibration differ mainly due to differences in body size, rather than differences of gender. • at least three frequency weightings may be necessary to estimate the subjective intensity for road surface stimuli.

Automation is creating revolution in the present industrial sector, as it reduces manpower and time of production. Our project mainly deals around the shearing operation, were the sheet is picked manually and placed on the belt for shearing which involves risk factor. Our challenge is designing of pick and place operator to carry the sheet from the stack and place it in the shearing machine for the feeding. We have gone through different research papers, articles and had observed the advanced technologies used in other industries for the similar operation. After related study we have achieved the design of a 3-jointed robotic arm were the base is fixed and the remaining joints move in vertical and horizontal directions. The end effector is also designed such that to lift the sheet we use suction cups were the sheet is uplifted with a certain pressure. Here we used Creo-Parametric for design and Autodesk-Inventor 2017 to simulate the designed model.

Submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master’s Degree in Technology: Chiropractic, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016. / Background The electromyographic response post-spinal manipulation may support the elucidation of the underlying neurophysiological mechanism of spinal manipulation on motor activity as well as on arthrogenic muscle inhibition. The literature shows conflicting evidence regarding the excitatory or inhibitory nature of the reflexive electromyographic response and the excitability of the homonymous motor neuron pool post-spinal manipulation. The current study investigated whether the electromyographic response post-spinal manipulation is affected by a facilitated golgi tendon organ Ib inhibitory di-synaptic spinal reflex as part of the convergent input on the homonymous motor neuron pool excitability. Objectives The objectives of this placebo-controlled, single-blinded, repeated measures design were: 1) to determine electrical activity and muscle force of the biceps brachii muscle immediately before and after an Activator Adjusting II Instrument placebo spinal manipulation, 2) to determine electrical activity and muscle force of the biceps brachii muscle immediately before and after a C5/C6 spinal manipulation, 3) to compare the electrical activity and muscle force of the biceps brachii muscle between the control and intervention groups pre- and post-test. Method Each participant performed three sets of modified stretching of the biceps brachii muscle with two minute rest intervals between each set in a single appointment, of which at a standardized fourth second during each set an intervention was applied to the ipsilateral C5/C6 segment. The first intervention (AAI 1) entailed the application of an Activator II Adjustment Instrument placebo spinal manipulation; the second intervention (AAI 2) entailed the application of an Activator II Adjustment Instrument placebo spinal manipulation; and the third intervention (SMT) entailed the application of spinal manipulation. One-second electromyography (EMG) segments were taken during the force plateau of each set; the EMG signal was processed through Root Mean Square (RMS) analysis and the muscle force data were obtained by using the Biopac - MP 150 Data Acquisition system and AcqKnowledge analysis software. Results The objective data analysis revealed a noteworthy scientific finding of a medical anomalous inverse relationship between the muscle force and EMG RMS immediately post-spinal manipulation. The immediate post-SMT intervention revealed an increase in the biceps brachii muscle force by 4.76 % and a decrease in the biceps EMG RMS by 9.03 % with a summation of percentage difference between the muscle force and EMG RMS of 13.79 %. The immediate post-placebo AAI 1 intervention showed a decrease in the biceps EMG RMS by 1.86 % and a decrease in the biceps brachii muscle force by 0.85 % with a summation of percentage difference between the muscle force and EMG RMS of 1.01 %. The immediate post-placebo AAI 2 intervention showed a decrease in the biceps EMG RMS by 0.05 % and a decrease in the biceps brachii muscle force by 1.97 % with a summation of percentage difference between the muscle force and EMG RMS of 1.92 %. Conclusion Further research is warranted to add statistical significance to the inverse relationship between muscle force and EMG RMS observed immediately post-spinal manipulation. This knowledge obtained, may have clinical relevance for rehabilitation practitioners and physical therapists by providing evidence based support for the suggestion that optimal management of patients with muscle weakness suspected to be of arthrogenic nature could include the application of spinal manipulation to the segmentally innervated facet joints before traditional strength training is initiated. / M

The thesis evaluates the viability of reducing power consumption of a contem- porary computer cluster by using more power-efficient hardware components. The cluster in question runs an Map-Reduce algorithm implementation and the worker nodes consist of either systems with an ARM CPU or systems which combine both an ARM CPU and an FPGA in a single package. The behavior of such cluster is discussed from both performance side as well as power consumption side. The text discusses the problems and peculiarities with the integration of an ARM-based and especially the combined ARM-FPGA-based systems into the Map-Reduce framework. The Map-Reduce framework performance itself is eval- uated to identify the gravest performance bottlenecks when using the framework in the environment with ARM systems. 1

Quantum computers are envisioned to be able to solve mathematical problems which are currently unsolvable for conventional computers, because of their exceptional computational power from quantum mechanics. Therefore, if quantum computers are ever built in large scale, they will certainly be able to solve many classical exponential complexity problems such as the hard problems which the current public key cryptography is constructed upon. To counteract this problem, the design of post-quantum cryptography protocols is necessary to preserve the security in the presence of quantum adversaries. Regardless of whether we can estimate the exact time for the advent of the quantum computing era, security protocols are required to be resistant against potentially-malicious power of quantum computing. In this thesis, the main focus is on the sperformance improvement of one of the potential PQC candidates, isogeny-based cryptography. Several optimized implementations of cryptography applications based on this primitive are presented. From a general viewpoint, the proposed methods, implementation techniques and libraries have a practical impact on the performance evaluation of post-quantum cryptography schemes in a wide range of applications. In particular, the provided benchmarks and optimizations on ARM-powered processors provide a reference for comparison and evaluation of isogeny-based cryptography with other post-quantum candidates during the first round of NIST's PQC standardization process. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Dynamic Binary Modification (DBM) is a technique for modifying applications at runtime, working at the level of native code. It has numerous applications, including instrumentation, translation and optimisation. However, DBM introduces a performance overhead, which in some cases can dominate execution time, making many uses impractical. While avenues for reducing this overhead have been widely explored on x86, ARM, an architecture gaining widespread adoption, has received little attention. Consequently, the overhead of DBM on ARM, as reported in the literature and measured using the available DBM systems, has fallen behind the state-of-the-art by one or two orders of magnitude. The research questions addressed in this thesis are: 1) how to develop low overhead DBM systems for the ARM architecture, and 2) whether new optimisations are plausible and needed. Towards that end, a number of novel optimisations were developed and evaluated specifically to address the sources of overhead for DBM on various ARM microarchitectures. Furthermore, many of the optimisations in the literature were ported to ARM and evaluated. This work was enabled by a new DBM system, named MAMBO, created specifically for this purpose. MAMBO, using the optimisations presented in this thesis, is able to achieve an overhead an order of magnitude smaller than that of the most efficient DBM system for ARM available at the start of this PhD.

Background: Current research, surrounding motor laterality at a population level in horses, indicates that in order to stand with the left forelimb in advance of the other, it is achieved by taking a greater amount of steps with the left foreleg than the right foreleg (McGreevy & Thomson 2006; McGreevy et al. 2007); suggesting that pedometers could effectively estimate asymmetry of forelimb locomotion in grazing horses. This novel method of detecting forelimb preference also reduces the likelihood of operator influence and provides an inexpensive objective measure of vertical movement which has the advantage of scoring large sample sizes, avoids single-day anomalies by recording over multiple days and overcomes logistical challenges (Vincent & Sidman 2003; Chan et al. 2005; Silva et al. 2010; Warren-Smith & McGreevy 2010). However in order to determine the reliability and validity of this novel measure the relationship between pedometer data and those derived from direct observation will first need to be assessed (Warren-Smith and McGreevy 2010). Objectives: To determine: (1) if pedometers accurately record equine steps at walk and trot, when compared to video analysis, (2) if alternative positioning of these pedometers affected the accuracy of step detection when compared to video analysis. Method: Five horses each wearing a Yamax Digiwalk SW-200 (spring lever arm pedometer) and a Yamax Power Walker PW-610/611 (piezoelectric pedometer) positioned on the left foreleg (LF), left scapular (LS), chest (C), right scapular (RS) and right foreleg (RF) walked and trotted on a 20m circle 10 times on each rein to yield 100 results for each gait. Video recorded by GoPro Hero 3 Black edition camera positioned on the girth facing the forefeet using the following settings: 180 degree field of view, 720p, 120fps. Both visual and audio data were captured and recorded. Results: Kruskal-Wallis Test on the deviation from actual number of steps per unit for each type of pedometer and the position of the pedometer compared to the actual number of steps taken by both forelegs determined that there is a significant difference (H1= 340.31; P < 0.0001) between readings in walk and also in trot (H1 = 483.49; P < 0.0001). A further Kruskal-Wallis Test on the deviation from actual number of steps per unit for each type of pedometer and the position of the pedometer compared to the actual number of steps taken by individual forelegs determined that there is a significant difference (H = 403.36; p < 0.0001) at walk and also at trot (H = 477.10; p < 0.0001). Conclusion: In summary, the analysis of the pedometer data compared to video analysis indicate that pedometers are not useful for scoring forelimb movements in horses at walk and trot, regardless of positioning.

No description available.

Nitrogen cycling was studied in the hypersaline northern arm of the Great Salt Lake (332,480 mg/l total dissolved solids) using a sediment-water microcosm simulation of that system. The study demonstrated that nitrate, ammonia, and urea were not stimulating to the halophilic bacteria in the microcosm. The bacteria were simulated only indirectly simulated bacterial growth. In addition, no nitrification could be demonstrated during the study. Weekly analyses of water samples from the north arm of the lake itself showed that nitrate and nitrite were absent, leaving ammonia as the only significant form of inorganic nitrogen in the northern lake basin. Other work on lake samples has indicated that no nitrogen fixation occurs in this system. Thus, the absence of nitrogen fixation, nitrification, and denitrification (because of the absence of nitrate) make it apparent that the production and the utilization of ammonia are the only two significant nitrogen cycling pathways operating in this system. The equilibrium established between the conversion of ammonia into organic nitrogen and the production of ammonia from mineralization of this organic matter is then responsible for the conditions which are found in the northern arm of the Great Salt Lake.