Sharif Digital Repository

Background and aim: Gait and balance disorders are common in the elderly populations, and their prevalence increases with age. This systematic review was performed to summarize the current evidence for subthreshold vibration interventions on postural control and gait in elderly. Method: A review of intervention studies including the following words in the title/abstract: insole, foot and ankle appliances, vibration, noise and elderly related to balance and gait. Databases searched included PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, Ovid, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Fifteen articles were selected for final evaluation. The procedure was followed using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews... 

Background: Cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive encephalopathy before, dur-ing, or after childbirth with almost the most common type, i.e. spastic diplegic, leading to a frequent walking problem, In-toeing. Orthoses can reduce the consequences of CP. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of combining twister wrap orthoses (TWO) with high-top shoes on the balance parameters of children with spastic diplegic CP. Material and Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, twenty children (aged 6.8 ± 0.5 years) with spastic diplegic CP with in-toeing gait participated. The tests were conducted in three conditions: 1) in bare-foot, 2) with high-top shoes, and 3) with high-top shoes... 

Tehran is the capital of Iran and is one of the largest cities in the world. With its history of earthquakes, high population density, and a population of over 8.5 million, it must be prepared to cope with disaster. This article introduces a new method for estimating the reliability of a roadway network that considers the physical characteristics of the road and link capacity degradation. The proposed method was applied to a real road network and the connectivity reliability of the city was calculated. The proposed technique for computing connectivity reliability is sensitive to the characteristics of the road and adjacent buildings. The results indicate that northern Tehran, with a low... 

The performance of an HTPB/N2O hybrid motor was experimentally investigated. A hybrid motor was designed and manufactured in a laboratory with the purpose of studying the effects of various parameters on the motor's performance, including fuel regression rate and specific impulse. A series of tests were conducted to find a correlation between the fuel regression rate and the oxidizer's mass flux. The effects of chamber's pressure on the regression rate as well as other performance parameters were investigated. While the burning rate did not change dramatically, both the efficiency and ISP of the motor increased. The local fuel regression rate and the fuel port were also calculated. In... 

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) systems, which are based on motor imagery, enable humans to command artificial peripherals by merely thinking about the task. There is a tremendous interest in implementing BCIs on portable platforms, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAS) due to their low-cost, low-power and portability characteristics. This article presents the design and implementation of a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system based on motor imagery on a Virtex-6 FPGA. In order to design an accurate algorithm, the proposed method avails statistical learning methods such as Mutual Information (MI), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). It also uses... 

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) systems, which are based on motor imagery, enable humans to command artificial peripherals by merely thinking about the task. There is a tremendous interest in implementing BCIs on portable platforms, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAS) due to their low-cost, low-power and portability characteristics. This article presents the design and implementation of a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system based on motor imagery on a Virtex-6 FPGA. In order to design an accurate algorithm, the proposed method avails statistical learning methods such as Mutual Information (MI), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). It also uses... 

This paper describes an attempt to develop congestion indices for a developing country with a limited sampling. Speed and flow rate information was collected from urban highway traffic flow videotaping in Iran. Video display provided information for traffic modeling when, similar to most of the developing nations, Iran does not have locally developed highway capacity manuals. Processing of the extracted data and traffic modeling provided free and capacity flow information for the selected freeway and principal arterial sections for the capital city of Tehran. The congestion indices were associated, in simple and logical models, with five traffic descriptive variables of travel speed, travel... 

Objective: Spine kinematics, kinetics, and trunk muscle activities were evaluated during different stages of a fatigue-induced symmetric lifting task over time. Background: Due to neuromuscular adaptations, postural behaviors of workers during lifting tasks are affected by fatigue. Comprehensive aspects of these adaptations remain to be investigated. Method: Eighteen volunteers repeatedly lifted a box until perceived exhaustion. Body center of mass (CoM), trunk and box kinematics, and feet center of pressure (CoP) were estimated by a motion capture system and force-plate. Electromyographic (EMG) signals of trunk/abdominal muscles were assessed using linear and nonlinear approaches. The L5-S1... 

Objective: Spine kinematics, kinetics, and trunk muscle activities were evaluated during different stages of a fatigue-induced symmetric lifting task over time. Background: Due to neuromuscular adaptations, postural behaviors of workers during lifting tasks are affected by fatigue. Comprehensive aspects of these adaptations remain to be investigated. Method: Eighteen volunteers repeatedly lifted a box until perceived exhaustion. Body center of mass (CoM), trunk and box kinematics, and feet center of pressure (CoP) were estimated by a motion capture system and force-plate. Electromyographic (EMG) signals of trunk/abdominal muscles were assessed using linear and nonlinear approaches. The L5-S1... 

The objective of this study was to quantify individual muscle function differences between level walking and backpack load carriage at the same speed by using a muscle-actuated forward dynamics simulation. As experimental investigations have revealed that backpack loads of up to 64 per cent of an individual's body mass have little effect on the sagittal plane gait kinema-tics, further biomechanical analyses are necessary to investigate the contributions of individual muscle coordination strategies to achieve a given motor task by mechanical power generation, absorption, and transference to each body segment. A biomechanical framework consisting of a musculoskeletal model actuated by 18... 

The consequences of road accidents are significant for drivers and society. The connected vehicle system (CVS) is a promising technology that can improve road safety by warning drivers of traffic hazards. Broad implementation of the CVS could mitigate the harmful consequences of road accidents. Widespread implementation requires schemes that can promote the pervasive adoption of the system by drivers. This study proposes the innovative idea of implementing the CVS in usage-based insurance (UBI) as a measurement probe and modeling drivers' acceptance of the new UBI scheme. This study developed a random effect logit model demonstrating that the drivers of cheaper vehicles and middle-age... 

Transit assignment is an important problem in the literature of transportation. Almost all competitive algorithms in this area are strategy based. For uncongested transit networks, the problem may be formulated into an optimization problem for which good solution algorithms exist. A variational inequality formulation of the problem with several solution methods is also presented in the literature for congested networks. This paper is devoted to solving a transit assignment problem based on complementarity formulation using path flows. The solution algorithm exploits the three concepts of decomposition, path generation, and linearization. The procedure has been applied on a large-scale... 

It is known that brain can create a sparse representation of the environment in both sensory and mnemonic forms (Olshausen & Field, 2004). Such sparse representation can be combined in downstream areas to create rich multisensory responses to support various cognitive and motor functions. Determining the components present in neuronal responses in a given region is key to deciphering its functional role and connection with upstream areas. One approach for parsing out various sources of information in a single neuron is by using linear blind source separation (BSS) techniques. However, applying linear techniques to neuronal spiking activity is likely to be suboptimal due to inherent and... 

This paper describes an attempt to shed some light on road safety in Asia Pacific region by characterizing and assessing its road accidents. The relevant national road accident data were extracted from centralized data sources of international agencies. Due to data incompleteness and missing values, 21 Asia Pacific countries, presenting more than half of the world's population, were selected for detailed analysis. The study database consisted of 7 variables, covering years 1980 and 1995. The univariate and multivariate statistical analyses for the selected countries showed interesting results and relations for the selected variables. Accident rates, reflecting road accident risk and... 

In directional drilling, the most important thing that leads to pulling out the drill string is end of mud motor working life. Considering the working conditions of down hole mud motors; increasing the mechanical properties of their stator’s elastomer is crucial. Some attempts were done to increase the motor performance through geometrical changes but lack of material improvement is significant in previous studies. In this study, NBR/nanoclay composite samples were prepared through melt intercalation in an internal mixer and tested with regard to the temperature and drilling mud of down hole. Hardness, tear, fatigue and tensile test results of neat NBR elastomer and nanocomposite of NBR and... 

Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation tool suited to alter cortical excitability and activity via the application of weak direct electrical currents. An increasing number of studies in the addiction literature suggests that tDCS modulates subjective self-reported craving through stimulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The major goal of this study was to explore effects of bilateral DLPFC stimulation on resting state networks (RSNs) in association with drug craving modulation. We targeted three large-scale RSNs; the default mode network (DMN), the executive control network (ECN), and the salience network (SN). Methods:... 

Background: Autonomous grasping of soft tissues can facilitate the robotic surgery procedures. The previous attempts for implementing auto-grasping have been based on a simplistic representation of the actual surgery maneuvers. Method: A generalized three-zone grasp model was introduced to consider the effect of the pull force angulation on the grasp mode, that is, damage, slip, or safe grasp. Also, an extended auto-grasping algorithm was proposed in which the trigger force is automatically controlled against the pull force magnitude and direction, to achieve a safe and secure grasp. Results: The autonomous grasping experiments against a varying pull force in a phantom study indicated a good... 

In this paper, design and prototyping of two-speed capacitor-run single-phase axial-flux induction motor (AFIM) for direct-drive applications is presented. The proposed structure has single stator-single rotor configuration with high magnetic pull between the stator and rotor, which may compel rotor to lock. Although the most efficient method to overcome this problem is using a second rotor or stator in the mirror with the first one, it is not applicable in low-cost applications. So, in this paper, two new and fast construction techniques are proposed to fabricate an AFIM with extra low air-gap length and minimum cost. Beside design and optimization process, a thermal equivalent circuit... 

Anxiety is among the most debilitating nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to determine how PD patients with low and high levels of anxiety (LA-PD and HA-PD, respectively) compare with age- and sex-matched controls at the level of motor control of reach-to-grasp movements during single- and dual-task conditions with varying complexity. Reach-to-grasp movement kinematics were assessed in 20 LA-PD, 20 HA-PD, and 20 sex- and age-matched healthy controls under single- as well as easy and difficult dual-task conditions. Assessment of PD patients was performed during both the on- and off-drug phases. The results obtained during dual-task conditions reveal deficits in... 

Freezing of gait (FOG) is a debilitating symptom in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), which may be associated with motor control impairments in tasks other than gait. This study aimed to examine whether symmetric and asymmetric bimanual coordination is impaired in PD with FOG (PD +FOG) patients and whether dual-task and drug phases may affect bimanual coordination in these patients. Twenty PD +FOG patients, 20 PD patients without FOG (PD –FOG) performed symmetric and asymmetric functional bimanual tasks (reach to and pick up a box and open a drawer to press a pushbutton inside it, respectively) under single-task and dual-task conditions. PD patients were evaluated during on- and...