Calf massager: Intervention for body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing

Many occupations require workers to stand for long periods of time without proper interventions, which causes discomfort in the back and lower limbs. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness in alleviating body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing through the use of a calf massager. This study was conducted among male workers at a manufacturer with production line workers and the list was obtained from the HR Department and simple random sampling was done by number categorization. A total of 100 respondents (50 respondents for both the control and the experimental groups) participated in this study. The experiment took place in a room with a similar setup for the production line. Each respondent was requested to perform the simulated task for 2 hr. For the experimental group, the calf massager was turned on every 15 min. At every 15‐min interval after turning on the calf massager, respondents from both groups were required to evaluate their discomfort level on a Borg's scale CR‐10 questionnaire. The results showed that the level of body discomfort among respondents in the experimental group reduced (20–30%) compared with that of the control group. Multivariate analysis results revealed that the discomfort rating for the lower back, knees, thighs, calves, and feet was significantly lower (p < .05) among the experimental group compared with the control group. For lower body parts, the lower back region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 90th, 105th, and 120th min; the thigh region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 120th min; the knee region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 105th and 120th min; the calf region was statistically significant (p < .05) at all minute intervals except the 15th and 45th min, while the feet region, was statistically significant at the 105th and 120th min. Therefore, this study indicates that calf massage treatment is capable of reducing body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing and highlights the significance of calf massage.     

Development of a Sensor Fusion Strategy for Robotic Application Based on Geometric Optimization

Fusion of multi-sensor information is an important technology, which is growing exponentially due to its tremendous application potential in many areas. Effective fusion of data from sensors is very critical in increasing an intelligent system's capability to accomplish complex tasks. Appropriate fusion technologies are needed to be developed specially when a system requires redundant sensors to be used. More the redundancy in sensors, more is the computational complexity for controlling the system and more is its intelligence level. This research presents a strategy developed for multiple sensor fusion, based on geometric optimization. Each sensor's uncertainty has been modeled using classical Lagrangian optimization techniques. However, the uniqueness and effectiveness of the present technique lies on the fact that starting from the optimized value as initial estimate the accuracy of the sensory information has further been improved up to any pre defined bounded range, by developing two architectures – FFA (fission–fusion architecture) and FDD (fusion in differential domain). Sufficient evidences and analyses have been provided in the paper to show its effectiveness in various applications.     

Carbohydrate polymers of chirata (Swertia chirata) leaves: Structural features, in vitro anti-oxidant activity and fluorescence quenching study

Chirata (Swertia chirata) is widely used in Indian folk medicine for the prevention of various disorders. Herein, we analyzed the water-extracted carbohydrate polymer (WECP) of this herb using chemical, chromatographic, and spectroscopic methods. The anti-oxidant capacity of this fraction was studied by ferric reducing anti-oxidant power (FRAP) and DPPH radical assays. Effect of WECP on bovine serum albumin spectrum (BSA) was determined using excitation wavelength of 282 nm. Anion exchange chromatography of WECP yielded 5 fractions (F1–F5) with different chemical compositions. The major fraction (F5) was homogeneous, had an apparent molecular mass of 4.5 kDa, and contains both carbohydrates (57%) and phenolics (34%). The anti-oxidant capacities of WECP and F5 were comparable to standard anti-oxidants. Notably, activities of the carbohydrate polymers (F1–F5) correlate with their phenolics content. Fluorescence quenching measurement suggests that F5 can form complex with BSA and the value of the binding constant is K=6.28×10⁵/M.     

Microstructure and properties of squeeze cast Cu-carbon fibre metal matrix composite

There have been reported attempts of producing Cu based MMCs employing solid phase routes. In this work, copper was reinforced with short carbon fibres by pressure infiltration (squeeze casting) of molten metal through dry-separated carbon fibres. The resulting MMC's microstructure revealed uniform distribution of fibres with minimum amount of clustering. Hardness values are considerably higher than that for the unreinforced matrix. Addition of carbon fibres has brought in strain in the crystal lattice of the matrix, resulting in higher microhardness of MMCs and improved wear resistance. Tensile strength values of MMCs at elevated temperatures are considerably higher than that of the unreinforced matrix processed under identical conditions.     

CdS microflowers and interpenetrated nanorods grown on Si substrate: Structural,optical properties and growth mechanism

CdS semiconductor with different morphologies have been achieved by simple thermal evaporation of CdS powder at 1050 °C in a flowing Ar atmosphere. The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Scanning electron microscopy, Transmission electron microscopy and Photoluminescence. microflowers and interpenetrative nanorods of CdS were formed on catalyst free Si wafers at a temperature of 700 °C and 600 °C respectively. The flower like structures are composed of many interleaving nanorods which have the uniform diameter of about 700 nm and a well crystalline structure with [0001] as growth direction. The interpenetrative nanorods are found to be bounded with six side facets. X-ray diffraction studies revealed the hexagonal structure in both the products. The formation mechanism of microflowers and interpenetrated nanorods was discussed on the basis of nucleation growth kinetics. Room temperature photoluminescence spectra showed a strong green emission band (at ∼510 nm) from the CdS flower like structures, but on the other hand a red emission shoulder along with strong green emission band was observed for interpenetrative nanorods. These CdS micro/nanostructures with abundant morphologies may find applications in various micro/nanodevices, and the kinetics-driven morphology might be exploited to synthesize similar structures of other functional II–VI semiconductors.     

Surface-immobilized peptide aptamers as probe molecules for protein detection

We demonstrate the use of surface-immobilized, oriented peptide aptamers for the detection of specific target proteins from complex biological solutions. These peptide aptamers are target-specific peptides expressed within a protein scaffold engineered from the human protease inhibitor stefin A. The scaffold provides stability to the inserted peptides and increases their binding affinity owing to the resulting three-dimensional constraints. A unique cysteine residue was introduced into the protein scaffold to allow orientation-specific surface immobilization of the peptide aptamer and to ensure exposure of the binding site to the target solution. Using dual-polarization interferometry, we demonstrate a strong relationship between binding affinity and aptamer orientation and determine the affinity constant KD for the interaction between an oriented peptide aptamer ST(cys+)_(pep9) and the target protein CDK2. Further, we demonstrate the high selectivity of the peptide aptamer STM_(pep9) by exposing surface-immobilized ST(cys+)_(pep9) to a complex biological solution containing small concentrations of the target protein CDK2.     

Multi-objective optimization problem under fuzzy rule constraints using particle swarm optimization

In this paper, a fuzzy multi-objective programming problem is considered where functional relationships between decision variables and objective functions are not completely known to us. Due to uncertainty in real decision situations sometimes it is difficult to find the exact functional relationship between objectives and decision variables. It is assumed that information source from where some knowledge may be obtained about the objective functions consists of a block of fuzzy if-then rules. In such situations, the decision making is difficult and the presence of multiple objectives gives rise to multi-objective optimization problem under fuzzy rule constraints. In order to tackle the problem, appropriate fuzzy reasoning schemes are used to determine crisp functional relationship between the objective functions and the decision variables. Thus a multi-objective optimization problem is formulated from the original fuzzy rule-based multi-objective optimization model. In order to solve the resultant problem, a deterministic single-objective non-linear optimization problem is reformulated with the help of fuzzy optimization technique. Finally, PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) algorithm is employed to solve the resultant single-objective non-linear optimization model and the computation procedure is illustrated by means of numerical examples.     

Fuzzy multi attribute group decision making method to achieve consensus under the consideration of degrees of confidence of experts’ opinions

The aim of this paper is to introduce a fuzzy multi attribute group decision making technique considering the degrees of confidence of experts’ opinions. In the process of decision making, each expert provides his/her evaluation over the alternatives depending on a finite set of attributes and constructs an individual fuzzy decision matrix. The proposed technique establishes an iterative process to aggregate the fuzzy information, given by individual expert, into group consensus opinion by using the fuzzy similarity measure. Then, based on group consensus opinion, the proposed approach utilizes the fuzzy similarity measure to find out the most desirable alternative through approximate reasoning. The proposed decision making technique is more flexible due to the fact that it considers the degrees of confidence of experts’ opinions. Finally an example has been shown to highlight the proposed methodology.