Adding Sound Transparency to a Spacesuit: Effect on Cognitive Performance in Females

Spacesuits may block external sound. This induces sensory deprivation; a side effect is lower cognitive performance. This can increase the risk of an accident. This undesirable effect can be mitigated by designing suits with sound transparency. If the atmosphere is available, as on Mars, sound transparency can be realized by augmenting and processing external sounds. If no atmosphere is available, such as on the Moon, then an Earth-like sound can be re-created via generative AR techniques. We measure the effect of adding sound transparency in an Intra-Vehicular Activity suit by means of the Koh Block test. The results indicate that participants complete the test more quickly when wearing a suit with sound transparency.

Migraine factors as reported by smartphone users

In this paper, we describe how we used a smartphone app to collect migraine data. The users log their migraine details in the app with the purpose of discovering their migraine triggers. We analyze details of over half a million migraines and we report some novel findings that traditional studies missed because of their rigid clinical setting. We report the most common triggers, symptoms, relief methods, onset locations and drug combination outcomes.

A smart pressure-sensitive insole that reminds you to walk correctly: an orthotic-less treatment for over pronation

We equipped an insole with a force sensor that can detect in real time when a foot over pronates. When such behavior is detected, we warn the user so they can correct their posture by using their own muscles. The effectiveness of this novel way to correct over pronation posture is evaluated over a two-week period. The use of vibrotactile feedback reduces over pronation by 30% to 50% during the first week. The natural benefits of the proposed method vs. use of passive orthotics are also presented.

Protein complex detection using interaction reliability assessment and weighted clustering coefficient

BACKGROUND

Predicting protein complexes from protein-protein interaction data is becoming a fundamental problem in computational biology. The identification and characterization of protein complexes implicated are crucial to the understanding of the molecular events under normal and abnormal physiological conditions. On the other hand, large datasets of experimentally detected protein-protein interactions were determined using High-throughput experimental techniques. However, experimental data is usually liable to contain a large number of spurious interactions. Therefore, it is essential to validate these interactions before exploiting them to predict protein complexes.

RESULTS

In this paper, we propose a novel graph mining algorithm (PEWCC) to identify such protein complexes. Firstly, the algorithm assesses the reliability of the interaction data, then predicts protein complexes based on the concept of weighted clustering coefficient. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the performance of PEWCC was compared to several methods. PEWCC was able to detect more matched complexes than any of the state-of-the-art methods with higher quality scores.

CONCLUSIONS

The higher accuracy achieved by PEWCC in detecting protein complexes is a valid argument in favor of the proposed method. The datasets and programs are freely available at http://faculty.uaeu.ac.ae/nzaki/Research.htm.

Detection of protein complexes using a protein ranking algorithm

Detecting protein complexes from protein-protein interaction (PPI) network is becoming a difficult challenge in computational biology. There is ample evidence that many disease mechanisms involve protein complexes, and being able to predict these complexes is important to the characterization of the relevant disease for diagnostic and treatment purposes. This article introduces a novel method for detecting protein complexes from PPI by using a protein ranking algorithm (ProRank). ProRank quantifies the importance of each protein based on the interaction structure and the evolutionarily relationships between proteins in the network. A novel way of identifying essential proteins which are known for their critical role in mediating cellular processes and constructing protein complexes is proposed and analyzed. We evaluate the performance of ProRank using two PPI networks on two reference sets of protein complexes created from Munich Information Center for Protein Sequence, containing 81 and 162 known complexes, respectively. We compare the performance of ProRank to some of the well known protein complex prediction methods (ClusterONE, CMC, CFinder, MCL, MCode and Core) in terms of precision and recall. We show that ProRank predicts more complexes correctly at a competitive level of precision and recall. The level of the accuracy achieved using ProRank in comparison to other recent methods for detecting protein complexes is a strong argument in favor of the proposed method.

Tetrahedral Mobile Robot with Spherical Omnidirectional Wheel

In this paper, a mobile robot with a tetrahedral shape for its basic structure is presented as a thrown robot for search and rescue robot application. The Tetrahedral Mobile Robot has its body in the center of the whole structure. The driving parts that produce the propelling force are located at each corner. As a driving wheel mechanism, we have developed the “Omni-Ball” with one active and two passive rotational axes, which is explained in detail. An actual prototype model has been developed to illustrate the concept and to perform preliminary motion experiments, through which the basic performance of the Tetrahedral Mobile Robot was confirmed.

Structural properties of a scaled gecko foot-hair

Experimental measurements on a cm-scale replica structure of a gecko foot-hair where magnets are used in place of (the usual) van der Waals force are reported. We conduct naked-eye experiments and investigate the mechanical properties of such hair structure and shapes that constitute it. Links between shapes and mechanical properties (functions) useful in geckos for clinging onto walls and adhering to rough surfaces are explained in terms of energy efficiency.