Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin that has been produced on this earth for more than 500 million years. During exposure to sunlight 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin absorbs UV B radiation and is converted to previtamin D3 which in turn isomerizes into vitamin D3. Previtamin D3 and vitamin D3 also absorb UV B radiation and are converted into a variety of photoproducts some of which have unique b...

The population of accretion-powered millisecond pulsars (AMSPs) has grown rapidly over the last four years, with the discovery of six new examples to bring the total sample to seven. While the first six discovered are transients active for a few weeks every two or more years, the most recently-discovered source HETE J1900.1−2455, has been active for more than 8 months. We summarise the transien...

Separating speech signals of multiple simultaneous talkers in a reverberant enclosure is known as the cocktail party problem. In real-time applications online solutions capable of separating the signals as they are observed are required in contrast to separating the signals offline after observation. Often a talker may move, which should also be considered by the separation system. This work pr...

This paper presents an ongoing project for augmenting acoustic instruments with active acoustics. Active acoustics are defined as audio-rate vibration driven into the instruments physical structure, inducing air-borne sound output. The instrument’s acoustic sound is thus doubled by an electronic soundscape radiating from the same source. The article is centered on a case study on two guitars, o...

This paper characterizes the temporal organization of speech within interstress intervals (ISI) for fast and normal rates of speech for two groups of English speakers: . normal speakers (NS), and a group of disfluent speakers (DS) whose speech rate was clinically rated as “slow”. Duration measurements of stressed vowels, (SV) unstressed vowels (USV) and intervowel intervals (IVI) were obtained ...

For automotive hands-free and speech recognition applications, distributed microphones are often mounted in the car where each of the speakers has a dedicated microphone close to his position. To provide additional control information for further speech enhancement, it is often advantageous to distinguish between the activity of the different passengers. In this contribution speaker activity is...

Little is known about kindergarten students' active school transportation (AST) and stroller/wagon use as sedentary travel devices. The primary objective of this cross-sectional study was to determine the prevalence of kindergarten children arriving to school by active and sedentary modes, including strollers, in Toronto elementary schools and compare to students in kindergarten to grade 6 (K-6...

Patients with tremor can benefit from wearable robots managing their tremor during daily living. To achieve this, the interfaces controlling such robotic systems must be able to estimate the user’s intention to move and to distinguish it from the undesired tremor. In this context, analysis of electroencephalographic activity is of special interest, since it provides information on the planning ...

Patterns of motor activity, commonly referred to as motor modules or muscle synergies, provide a tool to quantify muscle coordination during dynamic tasks. Modules are calculated from experimental electromyography (EMG) signals and describe weighted groups of muscles that are commonly activated together. In unimpaired individuals, only a small set (e.g., 3-5 modules) are required to describe ov...

Exoskeletons can be utilized for rehabilitation purposes as well as for assistance and augmentation of motion of patients with disabilities, workers, the elderly and even healthy people. Compared to powered solutions, unpowered passive exoskeletons have been shown to have significantly higher chances of end user acceptance, because of simpler design, no complex electronics and potentially lower...