objectives: this paper describes further improvement and preliminarily evaluation of a novel viscoelastic ankle-foot prosthesis prototype. the objective was to control the ankle hysteresis at slow and normal walking speeds. methods: inspired by the ankle biomechanics, in which the hysteresis differs based on the gait speeds, a manually damping control mechanism imbedded in the prosthesis for ad...

A new algorithm for clustering is presented — the Distributed Clustering Algorithm (DCA). It is designed to be incremental and to work in a real-time situation, thus making it suitable for robotics and in models of concept formation. The DCA starts with one cluster (or rather prototype at the center of the cluster), successively adding prototypes and distributing them according to data density ...

This paper presents a user survey-based analysis of the correlation between the users’ willingness to personalize Web search and their social network usage patterns. The participants’ responses to the survey questions enabled us to use a regression model for identifying the relationship between SNS variables and willingness to personalize Web search; the obtained results show that there is a st...

Current video database systems are able to manipulate syntactic aspects of temporal media like video and audio. However, few of these systems are able to manipulate video information according to its semantic content. Furthermore, manually describing video content is tedious and not practical for the video data due to the temporal, spatial, and massive characteristic of the video, meanwhile con...

dam spillways are the structures that lead rightly and safely the outflow downstream, so that the dam integrity can be guaranteed. many accidents with dams have been caused by an inadequate spillway design or insufficient capacity. to accurately respond the hydraulic spillways, designers use physical modeling for designing this kind of structures. the scale effect in the spillway modeling, as a...

This study examined the mediating effects of the self-stigma associated with seeking counseling and attitudes toward seeking counseling on the link between perceived public stigma and willingness to seek counseling for psychological and interpersonal concerns. Structural equation modeling of data from 676 undergraduates indicated that the link between perceived public stigma and willingness to ...

Hypothetical estimates of willingness to pay tend to overstate real willingness to pay. Several methods to mitigate this so called hypothetical bias have been developed. This paper contributes by presenting the first simultaneous comparison of three common hypothetical bias mitigation methods as well as their interactions. In addition, the study represents the first use of the contingent valuat...

Agricultural production is subject to high risk associated with environmental and agro-ecological conditions. Farmers continuously make decisions to mitigate the various adversities. This study evaluates farm households’ willingness to pay for agricultural risk insurance intervention introduced in Ethiopia in 2009. A bidding game approach is used to elicit willingness-to-pay. We use a unique da...