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Background:Preservation and enhancement of cognitive function are essential for the restoration of functional abilities and independence following stroke. While cognitive-motor dual-task training (CMDT) has been utilized in rehabilitation settings, many patients with stroke experience impair

Pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) have been very effective in reducing the disease burden caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae serotypes covered by the current vaccine formulations. However, the incidence of disease caused by serotypes not covered by the vaccine is increasing. Consequently, there are active efforts to develop new PCVs with additional serotypes in order to provide protection against the emergent serotypes. Due to costs and ethical issues associated with performing true vaccine efficacy studies, new PCVs are being licensed based on their immunogenicity, which may be assessed with 2 in vitro assays: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for quantitating antibody level and opsonophagocytic assay (OPA) for assessing protective function. While a standardized ELISA has been developed, OPA results from different laboratories can be quite disparate, even among laboratories utilizing the same platform. In order to harmonize OPA data, a recent international collaboration assigned opsonic indices to the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) reference serum, 007sp, as well as a panel of US FDA calibration sera. However, due to a low number of aliquots, the availability of these calibration sera is extremely limited. Because calibration sera are critical to establish the performance characteristics of an OPA, a second calibration serum panel was created, comprised of 20 sera collected from adults immunized with the 23-valent polysaccharide vaccine, with 150 to 500 aliquots prepared for each serum. In order to establish consensus OPA values of the 20 sera for the 13 serotypes in 13-valent PCV, the sera were tested by 4 laboratories in an international collaborative OPA study. The 007sp results of 1 laboratory deviated significantly from those obtained by the other laboratories, as well as from previously assigned values. Due to these discrepancies, the consensus values for the calibration sera were determined based on the data from the remaining laboratories. Thus, we were able to create a panel of sera with consensus opsonic values that could be used by outside laboratories to calibrate pneumococcal OPAs. Our results also confirmed findings of a previous study that normalization of OPA results significantly reduces interlaboratory variation, with normalization based on 007sp reducing variation by 43% to 74%, depending on serotype.

To overcome the limited relative uncertainty and work range of the existing planar stage and the bulk structure of the contact-less motor for rotation, the novel operating principle to realize the precise rotation is suggested. It uses the two-axial vector forces, normal force and thrust force, of three-induction type of axial motors located apart, resulting in the contact-free rotation of the mover. Firstly in this paper, the magnetic forces across the air gap are modeled and simulated under the various conditions. It clarifies the feasible range of the derived solution. And the algorithm compensating the strong cross couple between the forces and the control inputs; generally AC magnitude and slip frequency, is given to realize the independent control of six axes. Finally, for the successfully implemented system, the round test and the micro step test results are given.

Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety following percutaneous disc decompression, using navigable disc decompression device for cervical herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP). Methods Twenty subjects diagnosed with cervical HNP and refractory to conservative management were enrolled for the study. The herniated discs were decompressed under fluoroscopic guidance, using radiofrequency ablation device with navigable wand. The sagittal and axial plain magnetic resonance images of the clinically significant herniated disc, decided the space between the herniated base and outline as the target area for ablation. Clinical outcome was determined by Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), Neck Disability Index (NDI), and Bodily Pain scale of Short Form-36 (SF-36 BP), assessed after 48 weeks. After the procedure, we structurally matched the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and C-arm images through bony markers. The wand position was defined as being ‘correct’ if the tip was placed within the target area of both AP and lateral views; if not, the position was stated as ‘incorrect’. Results The average NRS fell from 7 to 1 at 48 weeks post procedure (p

Objective To investigate the improvement of dysphagia after balloon dilatation and balloon swallowing at the vallecular space with a Foley catheter in stroke patients. Methods This study was conducted between May 1, 2012 and December 31, 2015, and involved 30 stroke patients with complaints of difficulty in swallowing. All patients underwent videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) before and after vallecular ballooning. VFSS was performed with a 4 mL semisolid bolus. For vallecular ballooning, two trainings were performed for at least 10 minutes, including backward stretching of the epiglottis and swallowing of a balloon located in the vallecular space, by checking the movement of the Foley catheter tip in real time using VFSS. Results After examination of the dysphagia improvement pattern before and after vallecular ballooning, laryngeal elevation (x-axis: pre 2.62±1.51 mm and post 3.54±1.93 mm, p=0.038; y-axis: pre 17.11±4.24 mm and post 22.11±3.46 mm, p=0.036), pharyngeal transit time (pre 5.76±6.61 s and post 4.08±5.49 s, p=0.043), rotation of the epiglottis (pre 53.24°±26.77° and post 32.45°±24.60°, p

Objective To investigate the length of hospital stay (LOS) after stroke using the database of the Korean Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service. Methods We matched the data of patients admitted for ischemic stroke onset within 7 days in the Departments of Neurology of 12 hospitals to the data from the database of the Korean Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service. We recruited 3,839 patients who were hospitalized between January 2011 and December 2011, had a previous modified Rankin Scale of 0, and no acute hospital readmission after discharge. The patients were divided according to the initial National Institute of Health Stroke Scale score (mild, ≤5; moderate, >5 and ≤13; severe, >13); we compared the number of hospitals that admitted patients and LOS after stroke according to severity, age, and sex. Results The mean LOS was 115.6±219.0 days (median, 19.4 days) and the mean number of hospitals was 3.3±2.1 (median, 2.0). LOS was longer in patients with severe stroke (mild, 65.1±146.7 days; moderate, 223.1±286.0 days; and severe, 313.2±336.8 days). The number of admitting hospitals was greater for severe stroke (mild, 2.9±1.7; moderate, 4.3±2.6; and severe, 4.5±2.4). LOS was longer in women and shorter in patients less than 65 years of age. Conclusion LOS after stroke differed according to the stroke severity, sex, and age. These results will be useful in determining the appropriate LOS after stroke in the Korean medical system.

Double patterning technique using spacer which can avoid CD (Critical Dimension) uniformity problem mainly caused by overlay issue is one of the methods that could be applied to apply to manufacturing of memory devices. Though double exposure and etch technology (DEET) has comparative advantage in the number of process steps, it is required to dramatically improve overlay performance of current exposure tools for the realization of manufacturing. In this study, negative type-double pattering technique using spacer has been developed as the best way for the application of NAND flash memory device from the view point of CD uniformity and the number of mask layers used to complete double patterning. Negative type-double patterning technique using spacer consists of subsequent steps such as formation of poly line, spacer on sidewall of poly line, SOG gap fill into space between poly lines, SOG etch back, removal of spacer, and finally hard mask etch. We have used amorphous carbon as a spacer material to easily remove spacer from poly lines and adopted SOG material to easily fill in space between poly lines. When negative type-double patterning technique using spacer is applied to NAND flash memory device, we can expect that k1 factor of about 0.14~0.20 could be accomplished successfully.

Background: Word vectors or word embeddings are n-dimensional representations of words and form the backbone of Natural Language Processing of textual data. This research experiments with algorithms that augment word vectors with lexical constraints that are popular in NLP research and clinical domain constraints derived from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). It also compares the performance of the augmented vectors with Bio + Clinical BERT vectors which have been trained and fine-tuned on clinical datasets. Methods: Word2vec vectors are generated for words in a publicly available de-identified Electronic Health Records (EHR) dataset and augmented by ontologies using three algorithms that have fundamentally different approaches to vector augmentation. The augmented vectors are then evaluated alongside publicly available Bio + Clinical BERT on their correlation with human-annotated lists using Spearman & rsquo;s correlation coefficient. They are also evaluated on the downstream task of Named Entity Recognition (NER). Quantitative and empirical evaluations are used to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. Results: The counter-fitted word2vec vectors augmented with information from the UMLS ontology produced the best correlation overall with human-annotated evaluation lists (Spearman & rsquo;s correlation of 0.733 with mini mayodoctors & rsquo; annotation) while Bio + Clinical BERT produces the best results in the NER task (F1 of 0.87 and 0.811 on the i2b2 2010 and i2b2 2012 datasets respectively) in our experiments. Conclusion: Clinically adapted word2vec vectors successfully encapsulate concepts of lexical and clinical synonymy and antonymy and to a smaller extent, hyponymy and hypernymy. Bio + Clinical BERT vectors perform better at NER and avoid out-of-vocabulary words. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed The rise in the utilization of solar energy for energy generation has grown exponentially throughout the past decade. By the end of 2019, the global total installed solar capacity is close to 600 GW (Gigawatts). This share is only expected to rise.Although the current life of solar panels of about 25 years is a good figure to persist the interests of investors, a higher potential is anticipated for PV panels. This results in the sheer interest in investment in the potential recycling of solar panels, which is leading to demand and the need for policy development that regulates the responsibilities of stakeholders. This motive was led by a serious concern regarding the anticipated amount of waste that the disposal of solar panels would resort to. This results in the need of recycling of solar panels which is a relatively modern and growing phenomenon.This article aims to provide a detailed understanding of the existing policies involved in recycling silicon based PV panels currently being employed. In addition, the world's current position on policy issues regarding the recycling of solar panels will be discussed.

Precision agriculture needs integrated pest management (IPM), for which detection and identification of target invertebrate species is a prerequisite. Researchers have been developing various technologies to detect pests more efficiently and accurately. However, these existing sensing technologies still have limitations for effective infield applications. This review paper aims to explore the relative technologies and find a sensing method that has potential to detect and identify common invertebrates on crops, such as butterflies, locusts, snails and slugs. It was found that there are two main research branches for invertebrate detection and identification: acoustic sensing and machine vision system (MVS). Acoustic sensing is suitable for detecting and identifying pests in soil, stored grains and wood, while usually acoustic sensors need to be attached to samples for inspection, which causes difficulties for efficient infield applications. MVS has the potential to provide a more effective and flexible way to detect and identify invertebrates on crops. In recent work with MVS, the technologies of invertebrate identification have been intensively studied, however, infield detection is relatively weak. This review points out the current research gaps and then discusses the potential research directions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The human eye cannot see subtle motion signals that fall outside human visual limits, due to either limited resolution of intensity variations or lack of sensitivity to lower spatial and temporal frequencies. Yet, these invisible signals can be highly informative when amplified to be observable by a human operator or an automatic machine vision system. Many video magnification techniques have recently been proposed to magnify and reveal these signals in videos and image sequences. Limitations, including noise level, video quality and long execution time, are associated with the existing video magnification techniques. Therefore, there is value in developing a new magnification method where these issues are the main consideration. This study presents a new magnification method that outperforms other magnification techniques in terms of noise removal, video quality at large magnification factor and execution time. The proposed method is compared with four methods, including Eulerian video magnification, phase-based video magnification, Riesz pyramid for fast phase-based video magnification and enhanced Eulerian video magnification. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed magnification method regarding all video quality metrics used. Our method is also 60-70% faster than Eulerian video magnification, whereas other competing methods take longer to execute than Eulerian video magnification. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Machine vision technologies have shown advantages for efficient and accurate plant inspection in precision agriculture. Regarding the balance between accuracy of inspection and compactness for infield applications, multispectral imaging systems would be more suitable than RGB colour cameras or hyperspectral imaging systems. Multispectral image registration (MIR) is a key issue for multispectral imaging systems, however, this task is challenging. First of all, in many cases, two images needing registration do not have a one-to-one linear mapping in 2D space and therefore they cannot be aligned in 2D images. Furthermore, the general MIR algorithms are limited to images with uniform intensity and are incapable of registering images with rich features. This study developed a machine vision system (MVS) and a MIR method which replaces 2D-2D image registration by 3D-3D point cloud registration. The system can register 3D point clouds of ultraviolet (UV), blue, green, red and near-infrared (NIR) spectra in 3D space. It was found that the point clouds of general plants created by images of different spectral bands have a complementary property, and therefore a combined point cloud, called multispectral 3D point cloud, is denser than any cloud created by a single spectral band. Intensity information of each spectral band is available in a multispectral 3D point cloud and therefore image fusion and 3D morphological analysis can be conducted in the cloud. The MVS could be used as a sensor of a robotic system to fulfil on-the-go infield plant inspection tasks. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Images in red-green-blue (RGB) color space need to be transformed to other color spaces for image processing or analysis. For example, the well-known hue-saturation-intensity (HSI) color space, which separates hue from saturation and intensity and is similar to the color perception of humans, can aid many computer vision applications. For high-dimensional images, such as multispectral or hyperspectral images, transformation images to a color space that can separate hue from saturation and intensity would be useful; however, the related works are limited. Some methods could interpret a set of high-dimensional images to hue, saturation, and intensity, but these methods need to reduce the dimension of original images to three images and then map them to the trichromatic color space of RGB. Generally, dimension reduction could cause loss or distortion of original data, and, therefore, the transformed color spaces could not be suitable for material classification in critical conditions. This paper describes a method that can transform high-dimensional images to a color space called hyper-huesaturation- intensity (HHSI), which is analogous to HSI in high dimensions. The transformation does not need dimension reduction, and, therefore, it can preserve the original information. Experimental results indicate that the hyper-hue is independent of saturation and intensity and it is more suitable for material classification of proximal or remote sensing images captured in a natural environment where illumination usually cannot be controlled. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Real-time detection and identification of invertebrates on crops is a useful capability for integrated pest management (IPM), however, this challenging task has not been solved. Compared with other technologies, a machine vision system (MVS) could provide a more flexible solution. To date, most studies have focused on counting and identifying specimens in sample containers, glass slides or traps where the illumination and background reflection can be well controlled; few studies have been conducted to detect pests on plants. In the context of invertebrate detection or identification, the spectra of visible light, near infrared (NIR) and soft X-ray have been well studied, while the spectrum of ultraviolet (UV) is still untouched. Many species of bird prey on invertebrate pests and have adaptations in their visual system to enhance detection of targets. These birds can use both UV and visible light to hunt. If the mechanisms of bird vision could be transferred to a technological visual system, it might improve the capability for invertebrate detection. This study provides an initial estimation of the contribution of UV for invertebrate detection on green leaves. By fusing the UV images into the visible light and NIR images, the MVS can detect nine invertebrate species on leaves of plants and the UV images can significantly reduce segmentation errors. The initial experiment was conducted in a laboratory, however, this study shows promise for infield applications. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The main issue of vison-based automatic harvesting manipulators is the difficulty in the correct fruit identification in the images under natural lighting conditions. Mostly, the solution has been based on a linear combination of color components in the multispectral images. However, the results have not reached a satisfactory level. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes a robust nonlinear fusion method to augment the original color image with the synchronized near infrared image. The two images are fused with Daubechies wavelet transform (DWT) in a multiscale decomposition approach. With DWT, the background noises are reduced and the necessary image features are enhanced by fusing the color contrast of the color components and the homogeneity of the near infrared (NIR) component. The resulting fused color image is classified with a C-means algorithm for reconstruction. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated with the statistical F measure in comparison to some existing methods using linear combinations of color components. The results show that the fusion of information in different spectral components has the advantage of enhancing the image quality, therefore improving the classification accuracy in citrus fruit identification in natural lighting conditions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Real-time detection and identification of invertebrates on crops is a necessary capability for integrated pest management, however, this challenging task has not been well solved. Multispectral or hyperspectral machine vision systems have shown advantages for efficient and accurate detection and identification of certain invertebrate pests. However, only using spectral information has limited the capability for detection, especially for some camouflaged pests on host plants. Three-dimensional (3D) object representations are being intensively studied for multi-view object recognition and scene understanding in many fields. However, because the lack of proper data collection methods and robust algorithms, 3D technologies have not yet attained applications for detecting invertebrates. We have developed a multispectral 3D vision system which can create denser point clouds of plants and pests using the multispectral images of ultraviolet, blue, green, red and near-infrared. An algorithm named local variance of normals (LVN) was designed which can distinguish broad leaves from relatively larger pests in noisy point clouds. The vision system could aid integrated pest management systems for pest monitoring, or could be used as a sensor of an automatic pesticide sprayer. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The objective of this study was to design a non-invasive system for the observation of respiratory rates and detection of apnoea using analysis of real time image sequences captured in any given sleep position and under any light conditions (even in dark environments). A Microsoft Kinect sensor was used to visualize the variations in the thorax and abdomen from the respiratory rhythm. These variations were magnified, analyzed and detected at a distance of 2.5 m from the subject. A modified motion magnification system and frame subtraction technique were used to identify breathing movements by detecting rapid motion areas in the magnified frame sequences. The experimental results on a set of video data from five subjects (3 h for each subject) showed that our monitoring system can accurately measure respiratory rate and therefore detect apnoea in infants and young children. The proposed system is feasible, accurate, safe and low computational complexity, making it an efficient alternative for non-contact home sleep monitoring systems and advancing health care applications. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Recent research has enabled in-vivo examination of mucociliary transit in live airways by analysing the movement patterns of micron-sized markers in high resolution synchrotron X-ray images. However, high levels of false positives and false negatives severely impact the performance of many automated tracking algorithms. This paper proposes an improved approach to track valid mucociliary transit markers using a modified gating region and cost matrix. The proposed method offers a more effective way to associate markers with the correct trackers. Improved visualization methods are also introduced to assist the interpretation of the tracking results. The tracking method has achieved a tracking accuracy of 81.7% track purity and 71.3% track effectiveness. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Objective image quality assessment (IQA) is a challenge facing digital image and video processing systems because image quality is distorted during various applications, including restoration, compression, storage and transmission. Therefore, this study proposes a new methodology based on a fuzzy interface system called quality evaluation system (QES) to measure the total quality index (TQI) of input videos with many distorted situations. Nine quality metrics [peak signal-to-noise ratio, visual signal-to-noise ratio, weighted signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity (SSIM), multi-scale SSIM, universal image quality index, visual information fidelity, information fidelity criterion and noise quality measure] were used as inputs for three fuzzy logic controller systems, and their outputs were set as inputs to another fuzzy logic controller system to obtain the TQI of the input video. This process contributes to obtain clear performance of the quality index of the input video despite the failure of some IQA methods in providing quality performance of the input video in some situations. The proposed QES is tested on four videos captured with different digital cameras under different noise levels. Furthermore, the authors evaluated the proposed QES on three databases (TID2008, TID2013 and LIVE) to improve the experimental results. In addition, the authors used wavelet decomposition and image de-noising to enhance the standard Eulerian video magnification technique. The proposed QES was also used to prove that the authors' magnification system has better magnification quality index than other magnification techniques. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Research on procurement-production systems for deteriorating items has been done. The majority of studies assume that the perishable characteristics affect only the quantity of inventoried items. For food products, however, their quantity remains constant during their shelf life period, but the quality deteriorates over time. This paper proposes a new procurement-production model incorporating this situation. The quality change behavior of food products is approached differently depending on their forms either as raw materials or finished goods. As raw materials, the kinetic model is used to represent the quality degradation during storage time, while as finished goods the shelf-life dependent pricing is utilized to describe the value loss due to the quality perception of customers. A mathematical model representing the integrated procurement-production of raw materials and finished goods at a manufacturer is established in this research. The objective is to maximize the total profit per unit time of the system by controlling a number of variables, namely the production cycle (T), the number of raw materials’ procurement over one production cycle (m) and the number of finished goods delivery over one production cycle (n). Refereed/Peer-reviewed

—An analysis of supply chain system could become more complex when the network system should cover widely dispersed locations. This could happen in a case where a product must be delivered using long distribution channel. Byre viewing literatures over the last decade, this paper aims to identify and to gain more comprehensive understanding of the problems related to the long distribution channel’s characteristics. The term ‘long distribution channel’ refers to a multi-tiers in the distribution stages where each tier commonly contains more than one site. The result shows that in order to design an optimum long distribution channel, some prominent problems that impact on both distribution costs and delivery times need to be considered. The problems encompass variability, bottleneck, bullwhip effect, high transportation and logistics costs Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In this paper, an image fusion is presented to improve the citrus identification by filtering the incoming data from two cameras. The citrus image data has been photographed by using a portable bi-camera cold mirror acquisition system. The prototype of the customized fixture has been manufactured to position and align a classical cold mirror with two CCD cameras in relative kinematic position. The algorithmic registration on the pairwise images has been bypassed by both the spatial alignment of two cameras with recourse of software calibration and the triggering synchronization in temporal during the photographing. The pairwise frames have been fused by using the Daubechies wavelets decomposition filters. The pixel level fusion index rule is proposed to combine the low pass coefficients of the visible image and the low pass coefficients of the near-infrared image convoluted by the complementary of entropy filter from the visible low pass coefficients. In the study, the fused artifact color image and the non-fused color image have been processed and compared by some classification methods such as low dimensional projection, self-organizing map and the support vector machine. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper presents the study on half of the citrus fruit image data acquired from a cold mirror bi-camera acquisition system. The ultimate objective of this project is to extend a ripeness study on the citrus fruit image data and the segmentation methods by multispectral analysis for fruit picking robot. To acquire the combination of the image data, an economic portable cold mirror acquisition system has been prototyped to align two CCD cameras with a classical cold mirror on a custom built fixture. The use of the cold mirror system is an attempt to capture different waveband images without algorithmic registration on images from the same channel by triggering and synchronizing two cameras closely. With interchangeability, some physical optical filters can be interchanged on the cameras as well to capture the attenuated image data. In the study, some segmentation methods have been selected conceptually covering the color indices, Fisher linear discriminate analysis, and the hyperplane construction using single perceptron with the multilayer perceptron, and the competitive self-organizing map. Therefore both the original image data and the attenuated data by physical optical filter from one camera are compared to discuss the data improvement and performance of the methods on segmentation. From the results, the polarizer filtered data is closely better than neutral density filtered data and much better than the original image data. Performance of the segmentation methods and some issues regarding the data are discussed in this paper. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The success of a spacecraft mission depends to a great extent on the performance of the moving mechanical systems. The most common mode of failure in these systems is tribological. Tribological failures occur mainly due to non availability of lubricant at the working zone of the bearings as a result of degradation, evaporation and creep. The life of these moving mechanical systems could be extended, if lubricant is replenished by some means. This paper describes the development of a positive lubrication system named as command lubrication system (CLS). This is an active lubrication system which when actuated by external commands delivers lubricant to the bearings. It is actuated only when there is a demand for lubricant indicated by increase in frictional torque or bearing temperature. The outstanding feature of this system is that the lubricant is stored under ambient pressure and hence less chance of leakage. The CLS can solve the lubrication problem of spacecraft systems which require very long mission life of more than 20 years. It is also suitable to tribosystems in terrestrial devices.

The success of any satellite mission largely depends upon the performance of the attitude control systems such as gyroscopes and momentum/reaction wheels. The required life and performance quality of these rotating mechanisms are ensured by the selection of bearings and its lubrication. The design and development of lubrication system to meet the long-term uninterrupted performance is a challenging task before the tribologists. This article describes the developmental study of a lubrication system for long-term requirements of momentum/reaction wheels. The developed system is compact and can be placed inside the bearing unit assembly. It works on centrifugal force and able to supply lubricant continuously at a very low rate of few micrograms per hour for many years. Further, the system can be tuned for any flow rate depending on the requirement. � 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Supply chain management aims to add value across the supply chain and customer service is now a major strategic issue. Supply chains are complex and subject to variables of forecast, supply, process, and transportation which can lead to problems such as the bull whip effect, product lateness, damaged goods and stock outs. A key issue facing companies today is how to monitor and control performance across the chain. This paper presents Design for Six Sigma (DFSS), which focuses on customer requirements from the onset, as an effective methodology for monitoring and controlling supply chain variables, optimizing supply chain processes and meeting customer’s requirements. By applying DFSS methodology to the key supply chain process of order fulfillment, a customized representation of detailed activities of order fulfillment processes is demonstrated providing key performance indicators. A theoretical transfer function for predicting the performance of the perfect order incorporating fuzzy set theory provides a way of monitoring supply chain performance. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder that compromises the respiratory function and the ability of the mucociliary transit (MCT) system. One of the most recent researches introduced a noble method to investigate the progress of the treatment, in which small particles with mostly circular shape injected to the respiratory system and the images were taken using Synchrotron X-ray beam. Since the small particles flow through the respiratory system of the body, the direct observation of MCT measurement will help to understand the progress of the treatment. Identifying the particle is the critical step towards the automatic analysis of the image. However, the objects of interests are usually very small, not perfect circular shape and slightly overlapped from each other with lots of noise due to radiation. This paper proposes a robust and effective detection method of such particles using sectored ring mask (SRM) with gradient descent method. The proposed method extracts strong edges of the particles and the edge line gradients and circle fitting algorithm will filter out invalid edges, resulting in clear particle edge detection. The proposed method has validated through experimental study and presented robust detection rates of 91.9% precision and 89.0%recall. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper proposed super-resolution measurement to improve the conventional image-based coordinate measurement system. An undesirable attribute showed by the conventional system is that increasing the accuracy of the system would compromise the field of view of the system. To improve this problem, image super-resolution techniques are proposed to preprocess the observed frames. A Lagrange–Newton method is derived specifically for automatic measurement consideration. Different a priori knowledge was also examined and it was identified that identity model is the most efficient a priori knowledge among the four a priori knowledge tested. Using the Lagrange–Newton method and identity model, an experiment is carried out to evaluate the proposed super-resolution measurement. The result showed that super-resolution measurement increases the accuracy of the system without compromising the field of view. Furthermore, it is also shown that super-resolution measurement can perform measurement on dimension not achievable using the conventional method.

With the advanced developments and automation of the welding process, the use of process optimisation techniques has increased. The objective of the present paper is to describe process optimisation techniques for the gas metal arc (GMA) welding process, based on experimental results generated by the process. Back-propagation (BP) neural network and multiple regression methods are employed to study relationships between process parameters and top bead height for robotic multipass welding process, and to select a suitable model that provides the weld final configuration and properties as output and employs the process parameters as input. The process parameters, namely pass number, arc current, welding voltage and welding speed are optimised to produce the required top bead height. These techniques have achieved good agreement with the experimental data and yielded satisfactory results. Also, the BP neural network that was developed was compared to the empirical equations for predicting top bead height through additional experiments, and it was evident that the BP neural network was considerably more accurate than multiple regression techniques.

The problems that are common in a distribution network can become more serious in long distribution networks due to the increased complexity of the system. In order to overcome such problems, network models should take into consideration the characteristics that are more representative of long distribution networks. This paper reviews existing studies related to the use of long distribution network models that include two-stage and three-stage distribution networks. In addition to highlighting some of the key elements associated with the development of models, this paper examines the techniques that can be used to optimise them. This paper stresses the need to consider important information in the process of developing a long distribution network model that takes into consideration the problems that are inherent in long distribution networks. The paper concludes by providing recommendations for future research in this field.

The maintenance process shares significant operating costs in an organisation. Lean thinking can be incorporated into maintenance activities through applying its principles and practices/tools. Lean maintenance (LM) is a prerequisite for lean manufacturing systems. This research proposes a new structure for LM process based on a systematic literature review of a significant number of related articles that were published on LM. The process structure is designed based on the five lean principles to guide and support organisations to pursue maintenance excellence. This study establishes a scheme for LM tools that are structured into 2 level 4 bundles and 26 lean practices/tools and develops a House of Waste (HoW) to demonstrate the association between maintenance wastes and the LM tools. With a successful accomplishment of the proposed scheme, the performance of a maintenance department can create more improvement opportunities over time to reach the maintenance excellence status. Production and Manufacturing Research Volume 3, Issue 1, 1 January 2015, Pages 236-272

In this chapter, the use of two images, the near infrared image and the color image, from a bi-camera machine vision system is investigated to improve the detection of the citrus fruits in the image. The application has covered the design of the bi-camera vision system to align two CCD cameras, the online acquisition of the citrus fruit tree image, and the fusion of two aligned images. In the system, two cameras have been registered with alignment to ensure the fusion of two images. A fusion method has been developed based on the Multiscale Decomposition Analysis (MSD) with a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) application for the two dimensional signal. In the fusion process, two image quality issues have been addressed. One is the detail noise from the background, which is bounded with the envelope spectra and with similar spectra to orange citrus fruit and spatial variance property. The second is the enhancement of the fundamental envelope spectra using two source images. With level of MSD estimated, the noise is reduced by zeroing the high pass coefficients in DWT while the fundamental envelope spectra from the color image are enhanced by an arithmetic pixel level fusion rule. To evaluate the significant improvement of the image quality, some major classification methods are applied to compare the classified results from the fused image with the results from the types of color image. The misclassification error is measured by the empirical type errors using the manual segmentation reference image. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Product Service System (PSS) is introduced as a new concept which means the products and services can be integrated to a package and delivered to customer. From the definition and classification, a PSS can be seen as a system including a set of servicing modes of product. Therefore, designing appropriate PSS to satisfy customer requirements is an important issue in current research. This article reviews current design methodologies and categorized them into three patterns. Each pattern has its advantages and limitations. Hence a new design approach is proposed in this paper. This approach includes integral develop process and focuses on the conceptual design of PSS, which requires innovative thinking to identify possible servicing modes according to customer requirements. Then the evaluation method is provided to help designers to select the principle conceptual solution. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In automatic fruit harvesting system, the method of fruit identification by using machine vision has been researched underway for years. The ultimate objective of this project is to extend a ripeness study on the citrus fruit image data and the identification methodologies by multispectral analysis for fruit picking robot. To acquire the combination of the citrus fruit image data, a cold mirror acquisition system has been prototyped to align two CCD cameras with a classical cold mirror on a custom built fixture. The use of the cold mirror system is an attempt to capture both images without registration at the same view by triggering and synchronizing two cameras. With flexible interchangeability, some physical optical filters have been interchanged on the cameras to capture the combination of the citrus image data. In this part of study, Fisher linear discriminate analysis has been used on the natural citrus image data to discuss the probability of the identification on the image by modifying the image data. In the process, the component of the visible image is selected as the dominating component based on the spectral contrast between the ripe colored citrus fruit and the background. The second component from certain near infrared spectral area is selectable to be combined with the visible component by convolution. In FLDA, the major eigenvector is found as the projection direction uniquely from the data sets of the fruit and the background. On top of the information from FLDA, the classification on the fruit set and the background set is performed by the nearest neighbor estimation in the lower dimensional space on different schemes of the image data. By comparing with some other color indices methods, the overall outcome by FLDA gives a better identification result on all sampling image data with small estimation error. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The spacecraft attitude control system contains attitude error sensors such as gyroscopes and actuators such as momentum wheels and reaction wheels. The control moment gyros (CMG), in which the momentum wheels are mounted in gimbals, are also used in attitude control of spacecrafts. All these systems are designed to operate continuously till the end of the mission at varying speeds of several thousand rpm. The on-orbit performance of spacecrafts depends largely on the performance of the momentum/reaction wheels which in turn depends on the bearings used and its lubrication, since the only component which undergoes wear in these systems are the ball bearings. Currently, the life cycle of spacecrafts are aimed to be around 20–30 years. However, the increases in size, complexity and life expectancy of spacecrafts demand advanced technologies especially in tribology and in turn the development of more innovative lubrication systems for long-term operation. Space tribology is a subset of the lubrication field dealing with the reliable performance of satellites and spacecraft including the space station. Lubrication of space system is still a challenging task confronting the tribologists due to the unique factors encountered in space such as near zero gravity, hard vacuum, weight restriction and unattended operation. Since the beginning of space exploration, a number of mission failures have been reported due to bearing system malfunction (Robertson & Stoneking 2003; Kingsbury, et.al., 1999; Bedingfield, et. al., 1996) and the most recent is the bearing failure in the control moment gyro (CMG) of the international space station on July 2002 (Burt and Loffi, 2003).

This paper presents a portable multispectral data acquisition system for extending part of citrus fruit imaging and measurement purpose. An economic mechanic based fixture has been made to position and align a classical cold mirror and two CCD cameras in relative kinematic position. With optocoupler interface, two cameras have been synchronized to capture the images at the same view to acquire certain spectral area from the visible to the near infrared area based on the cold mirror function. To register both images from two cameras, the software based self calibration has been done to estimate the precision of two cameras position relative to the 3D object pattern frame via the cold mirror. The issues regarding the calibration and the distortion produced by the lens on real images have been discussed. The calibration result from the bi-camera system achieved averagely no more than 2 pixels misalignment error corresponding to less than 8 micrometer with non-uniform error distribution on the whole image. The real time fruit citrus images from both cameras have been segmented to estimate the misalignment error to select the well aligned images for the study. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This is a proposal on combination of PSO based path planning by using data from odometry and on-board camera image based obstacle avoidance for real time multi-agents robotics system application. This is a system which is a robust yet low cost centralized control multi-agent system for various application especially indoor surveillance systems. PSO will help the robots to move towards the target and at the same time avoiding the obstacle Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Power train system design is one of the key R & D areas on the development process of new automobile because an optimum size of engine with adaptable power transmission which can accomplish the design requirement of new vehicle can be obtained through the system design. Especially, for the electric vehicle design, very reliable design algorithm of a power train system is required for the energy efficiency. In this study, an analytical simulation algorithm is developed to estimate driving performance of a designed power train system of an electric. The principal theory of the simulation algorithm is conservation of energy with several analytical and experimental data such as rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag, mechanical efficiency of power transmission etc. From the analytical calculation results, running resistance of a designed vehicle is obtained with the change of operating condition of the vehicle such as inclined angle of road and vehicle speed. Tractive performance of the model vehicle with a given power train system is also calculated at each gear ratio of transmission. Through analysis of these two calculation results: running resistance and tractive performance, the driving performance of a designed electric vehicle is estimated and it will be used to evaluate the adaptability of the designed power train system on the vehicle. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Robotic gas metal arc (GMA) welding is a manufacturing process which is used to produce high quality joints and has to a capability to be utilized in automation systems to enhance productivity. Despite its widespread use in the various manufacturing industries, the full automation of the robotic GMA welding has not yet been achieved partly because mathematical models for the process parameters for a given welding tasks are not fully understood and quantified. In this research, an attempt has been made to develop a neural network model to predict the weld bead width as a function of key process parameters in robotic GMA welding. The neural network model is developed using two different training algorithms; the error back-propagation algorithm and the Levenberg–Marquardt approximation algorithm. The accuracy of the neural network models developed in this study has been tested by comparing the simulated data obtained from the neural network model with that obtained from the actual robotic welding experiments. The result shows that the Levenberg–Marquardt approximation algorithm is the preferred method, as this algorithm reduces the root of the mean sum of squared (RMS) error to a significantly small value.

A problem of task rescheduling using a coordinator in a structural decentralised control of discrete-event systems is formulated. After the local supervisors have been designed for a given task, a coordinator can be used to solve some rescheduling problems among local plants. The coordination system models the interactions of local plants, and is consisting of only the shared events, so simpler to synthesise. Under the conditions developed in this paper, the combined concurrent actions of the coordinator with the existing local supervisors can achieve the rescheduling requirements. An example is provided for illustration.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) focuses on a business process approach with an emphasis on having a holistic view of the value chain, customer driven demand and the need to manage successfully both the internal functional and external business process interfaces. In this paper an adaptation of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology for designing and managing a supply chain is presented, demonstrating how Order fulfilment is one of the major Critical to Customer Requirements (CCRs) for a supply chain. A detailed explanation of the DFSS steps Identify, Design, Optimise and Validate (IDOV) as adapted to supply chain service is illustrated.

In horticultural industry, conventional harvesting is done by 'handpicking' methods to remove hundreds of fruits such as citrus fruits in random spatial locations on the individual fruit trees. It is well known that harvesting fruits in a large scale is still inefficient and not cost effective. To solve this challenging task, mechanical harvesting systems have been investigated and practiced to enhance profitability and efficiency of horticultural businesses. However they often damage fruits in the harvesting process. Development of efficient fruit removal methods are required to maintain the fruits quality. This paper reviews fruit harvesting systems from purely mechanical based systems in which operator involvement is still required, to automatic robotic harvesting systems which require minimal or no human intervention in their operation. The researches on machine vision system methodologies used in the automatic detection, inspection and the location of fruits for harvesting are also included. The review is focused on the citrus fruits due to the fact that the research on citrus fruit harvesting mechanism is a bit more advanced than others. Major issues are addressed in the camera sensor and filter designs and image segmentation methods used to identify the fruits within the image. From this review, the major research issues are addressed as future research directions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed