scholarly journals Intracortical Microelectrode Array Unit Yield under Chronic Conditions: A Comparative Evaluation

Micromachines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 972
Author(s):  
Joshua O. Usoro ◽  
Brandon S. Sturgill ◽  
Kate C. Musselman ◽  
Jeffrey R. Capadona ◽  
Joseph J. Pancrazio

While microelectrode arrays (MEAs) offer the promise of elucidating functional neural circuitry and serve as the basis for a cortical neuroprosthesis, the challenge of designing and demonstrating chronically reliable technology remains. Numerous studies report “chronic” data but the actual time spans and performance measures corresponding to the experimental work vary. In this study, we reviewed the experimental durations that constitute chronic studies across a range of MEA types and animal species to gain an understanding of the widespread variability in reported study duration. For rodents, which are the most commonly used animal model in chronic studies, we examined active electrode yield (AEY) for different array types as a means to contextualize the study duration variance, as well as investigate and interpret the performance of custom devices in comparison to conventional MEAs. We observed wide-spread variance within species for the chronic implantation period and an AEY that decayed linearly in rodent models that implanted commercially-available devices. These observations provide a benchmark for comparing the performance of new technologies and highlight the need for consistency in chronic MEA studies. Additionally, to fully derive performance under chronic conditions, the duration of abiotic failure modes, biological processes induced by indwelling probes, and intended application of the device are key determinants.

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.G. Scrimgeour

This paper provides a stocktake of the status of hill country farming in New Zealand and addresses the challenges which will determine its future state and performance. It arises out of the Hill Country Symposium, held in Rotorua, New Zealand, 12-13 April 2016. This paper surveys people, policy, business and change, farming systems for hill country, soil nutrients and the environment, plants for hill country, animals, animal feeding and productivity, and strategies for achieving sustainable outcomes in the hill country. This paper concludes by identifying approaches to: support current and future hill country farmers and service providers, to effectively and efficiently deal with change; link hill farming businesses to effective value chains and new markets to achieve sufficient and stable profitability; reward farmers for the careful management of natural resources on their farm; ensure that new technologies which improve the efficient use of input resources are developed; and strategies to achieve vibrant rural communities which strengthen hill country farming businesses and their service providers. Keywords: farming systems, hill country, people, policy, productivity, profitability, sustainability


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
Santiago Iglesias-Baniela ◽  
Juan Vinagre-Ríos ◽  
José M. Pérez-Canosa

It is a well-known fact that the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster caused the escort towing of laden tankers in many coastal areas of the world to become compulsory. In order to implement a new type of escort towing, specially designed to be employed in very adverse weather conditions, considerable changes in the hull form of escort tugs had to be made to improve their stability and performance. Since traditional winch and ropes technologies were only effective in calm waters, tugs had to be fitted with new devices. These improvements allowed the remodeled tugs to counterbalance the strong forces generated by the maneuvers in open waters. The aim of this paper is to perform a comprehensive literature review of the new high-performance automatic dynamic winches. Furthermore, a thorough analysis of the best available technologies regarding towline, essential to properly exploit the new winches, will be carried out. Through this review, the way in which the escort towing industry has faced this technological challenge is shown.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 710
Author(s):  
Tanja Ilić ◽  
Ivana Pantelić ◽  
Snežana Savić

Due to complex interdependent relationships affecting their microstructure, topical semisolid drug formulations face unique obstacles to the development of generics compared to other drug products. Traditionally, establishing bioequivalence is based on comparative clinical trials, which are expensive and often associated with high degrees of variability and low sensitivity in detecting formulation differences. To address this issue, leading regulatory agencies have aimed to advance guidelines relevant to topical generics, ultimately accepting different non-clinical, in vitro/in vivo surrogate methods for topical bioequivalence assessment. Unfortunately, according to both industry and academia stakeholders, these efforts are far from flawless, and often upsurge the potential for result variability and a number of other failure modes. This paper offers a comprehensive review of the literature focused on amending regulatory positions concerning the demonstration of (i) extended pharmaceutical equivalence and (ii) equivalence with respect to the efficacy of topical semisolids. The proposed corrective measures are disclosed and critically discussed, as they span from mere demands to widen the acceptance range (e.g., from ±10% to ±20%/±25% for rheology and in vitro release parameters highly prone to batch-to-batch variability) or reassess the optimal number of samples required to reach the desired statistical power, but also rely on specific data modeling or novel statistical approaches.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph E.H. Sims

AbstractSome forms of renewable energy have long contributed to electricity generation, whereas others are just emerging. For example, large-scale hydropower is a mature technology generating about 16% of global electricity, and many smaller scale systems are also being installed worldwide. Future opportunities to improve the technology are limited but include upgrading of existing plants to gain greater performance efficiencies and reduced maintenance. Geothermal energy, widely used for power generation and direct heat applications, is also mature, but new technologies could improve plant designs, extend their lifetimes, and improve reliability. By contrast, ocean energy is an emerging renewable energy technology. Design, development, and testing of a myriad of devices remain mainly in the research and development stage, with many opportunities for materials science to improve design and performance, reduce costly maintenance procedures, and extend plant operating lifetimes under the harsh marine environment.


Author(s):  
Eugene Babeshko ◽  
Ievgenii Bakhmach ◽  
Vyacheslav Kharchenko ◽  
Eugene Ruchkov ◽  
Oleksandr Siora

Operating reliability assessment of instrumentation and control systems (I&Cs) is always one of the most important activities, especially for critical domains like nuclear power plants (NPPs). Intensive use of relatively new technologies like field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in I&C which appear in upgrades and in newly built NPPs makes task to develop and validate advanced operating reliability assessment methods that consider specific technology features very topical. Increased integration densities make the reliability of integrated circuits the most crucial point in modern NPP I&Cs. Moreover, FPGAs differ in some significant ways from other integrated circuits: they are shipped as blanks and are very dependent on design configured into them. Furthermore, FPGA design could be changed during planned NPP outage for different reasons. Considering all possible failure modes of FPGA-based NPP I&C at design stage is a quite challenging task. Therefore, operating reliability assessment is one of the most preferable ways to perform comprehensive analysis of FPGA-based NPP I&Cs. This paper summarizes our experience on operating reliability analysis of FPGA based NPP I&Cs.


Author(s):  
Dheeraj Chhillar ◽  
Kalpana Sharma

<span>There are various root causes of software failures. Few years ago, software used to fail mainly due to functionality related bugs. That used to happen due to requirement misunderstanding, code issues and lack of functional testing. A lot of work has been done in past on this and software engineering has matured over time, due to which software’s hardly fail due to functionality related bugs. To understand the most recent failures, we had to understand the recent software development methodologies and technologies. In this paper we have discussed background of technologies and testing progression over time. A survey of more than 50 senior IT professionals was done to understand root cause of their software project failures. It was found that most of the softwares fail due to lack of testing of non-functional parameters these days. A lot of research was also done to find most recent and most severe software failures. Our study reveals that main reason of software failures these days is lack of testing of non-functional requirements. Security and Performance parameters mainly constitute non-functional requirements of software. It has become more challenging these days due to lots of development in the field of new technologies like Internet of things (IoT), Cloud of things (CoT), Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, robotics and excessive use of mobile and technology in everything by masses. Finally, we proposed a software development model called as T-model to ensure breadth and depth of software is considered while designing and testing of software. </span>


1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (53) ◽  
pp. 20-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Goodman ◽  
Tony Coe ◽  
Huw Williams

The relationship between live theatre and the rapidly developing multimedia technologies has been ambiguous and uneasy, both in the practical and the academic arena. Many have argued that such technologies put the theatre and other live arts at risk, while others have seen them as a means of preserving the elusive traces of live performance, making current work accessible to future generations of artists and scholars. A few performance and production teams have entered the fray, deliberately pushing the technology to its limits to see how useful it may (or may not) be in dealing with the theatre. One such team – comprising Lizbeth Goodman, Tony Coe, and Huw Williams – forms the Open University BBC's Multimedia Shakespeare Research Project, and on 4 September 1997 they presented their work as the annual BFI Lecture at the Museum of the Moving Image on London's South Bank. What follows is an edited and updated transcript of the lecture – which was itself a ‘multimedia performance’ – intended to spark debate about the possibilities and limitations of using multimedia in creating and preserving ‘live’ theatre. Lizbeth Goodman is Lecturer in Literature at the Open University, where she chairs both the Shakespeare Multimedia Research Project and the new ‘Shakespeare: Text and Performance’ course. Tony Coe is Senior Producer at the OU/BBC, where Huw Williams was formerly attached to the Interactive Media Centre, before becoming Director of Createc for the National Film School, and subsequently Director of Broadcast Solutions, London. Together the team has created a range of multimedia CD-ROMs designed to test the limits and possibilities of new technologies for theatre and other live art forms – beginning with Shakespeare


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tareq Z. Ahram

Abstract Given the most competitive nature of global business environment, effective engineering innovation is a critical requirement for all levels of system lifecycle development. The society and community expectations have increased beyond environmental short term impacts to global long term sustainability approach. Sustainability and engineering competence skills are extremely important due to a general shortage of engineering talent and the need for mobility of highly trained professionals [1]. Engineering sustainable complex systems is extremely important in view of the general shortage of resources and talents. Engineers implement new technologies and processes to avoid the negative environmental, societal and economic impacts. Systems thinking help engineers and designers address sustainable development issues with a global focus using leadership and excellence. This paper introduces the Systems Engineering (SE) methodology for designing complex and more sustainable business and industrial solutions, with emphasis on engineering excellence and leadership as key drivers for business sustainability. The considerable advancements achieved in complex systems engineering indicate that the adaptation of sustainable SE to business needs can lead to highly sophisticated yet widely useable collaborative applications, which will ensure the sustainability of limited resources such as energy and clean water. The SE design approach proves critical in maintaining skills needed in future capable workforce. Two factors emerged to have the greatest impact on the competitiveness and sustainability of complex systems and these were: improving skills and performance in engineering and design, and adopting SE and human systems integration (HSI) methodology to support sustainability in systems development. Additionally, this paper provides a case study for the application of SE and HSI methodology for engineering sustainable and complex systems.


Kick It ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Matt Brennan

This chapter explains the motivations for researching the social history of the drum kit. It traces the history of drummer jokes and outlines the structure of the chapters to follow. Chapter 1 traces the racist roots of linking drummers to primitive stereotypes and contrasts this against the cleverness of drummers that culminated in the invention of the drum. Chapter 2 shows how drummers in fact contributed to redefining the boundaries between noise and music. Chapter 3 reveals how drummers developed new conventions of literacy while standardizing both the components and performance practice of their instrument. Chapter 4 examines the development of the status of drummers as creative artists. Chapter 5 looks at drumming as a form of musical labour. Chapter 6 considers attempts to replace the drum kit and drummers with new technologies, and how such efforts ultimately underscored the centrality of the drum kit as part of the contemporary soundscape.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (23) ◽  
pp. 6926
Author(s):  
Luis Castillo-Henríquez ◽  
Mariana Brenes-Acuña ◽  
Arianna Castro-Rojas ◽  
Rolando Cordero-Salmerón ◽  
Mary Lopretti-Correa ◽  
...  

Biosensors are measurement devices that can sense several biomolecules, and are widely used for the detection of relevant clinical pathogens such as bacteria and viruses, showing outstanding results. Because of the latent existing risk of facing another pandemic like the one we are living through due to COVID-19, researchers are constantly looking forward to developing new technologies for diagnosis and treatment of infections caused by different bacteria and viruses. Regarding that, nanotechnology has improved biosensors’ design and performance through the development of materials and nanoparticles that enhance their affinity, selectivity, and efficacy in detecting these pathogens, such as employing nanoparticles, graphene quantum dots, and electrospun nanofibers. Therefore, this work aims to present a comprehensive review that exposes how biosensors work in terms of bacterial and viral detection, and the nanotechnological features that are contributing to achieving a faster yet still efficient COVID-19 diagnosis at the point-of-care.


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