A chip-based system mimicking the transport function of the human cardiovascular system has been established at minute but standardized microsystem scale. A peristaltic on-chip micropump generates pulsatile shear stress in a widely adjustable physiological range within a microchannel circuit entirely covered on all fluid contact surfaces with human dermal microvascular endothelial cells. This m...

Gaining a fundamental understanding of adjustable autonomy (AA) is critical if we are to deploy multi-agent systems in support of critical human activities. Indeed, our recent work with intelligent agents in the “Electric Elves” (E-Elves) system has convinced us that AA is a critical part of any human collaboration software. In the following, we first briefly describe E-Elves, then discuss AA i...

Recent solutions to the curve-fitting problem, described in Forster and Sober ([1994]), trade off the simplicity and fit of hypotheses by defining simplicity as the paucity of adjustable parameters. Scott De Vito ([1997]) charges that these solutions are ‘conventional’ because he thinks that the number of adjustable parameters may change when the hypotheses are described differently. This he be...

Human-robot interaction is becoming an increasingly important research area. In this paper, we present our work on designing a human-robot system with adjustable autonomy and describe not only the prototype interface but also the corresponding robot behaviors. In our approach, we grant the human meta-level control over the level of robot autonomy, but we allow the robot a varying amount of self...

The article has indicated the principle scheme for post-harvest processing of cultural berries according to the possibilities of the developed new berry sorter. The article tackles the constructive features of the post-harvest treatment of berries as well as of the belt sorter that functions on the principle of successive sorting method. The aim of study was to evaluate the technological featur...

The neutron emissivity profile in the Madison Symmetric Torus is being reconstructed through the use of a collimated neutron detector. A scintillator-photomultiplier tube (PMT) system is employed to detect the fusion neutrons with the plasma viewing volume defined by a 55 cm deep, 5 cm diameter aperture. Effective detection of neutrons from the viewing volume is achieved through neutron moderat...

Current standards reserve one bit in the ATM cell header to indicate loss priority. When congestion occurs ai a queue lower priority cells can be discarded in order to insure a smaller cell loss rate for higher priority cells. Strategies for determining which cells to discard are termed space priority buffer management schemes. In ihis paper two adjustable space priority schemes are studied, wh...

Despite its principal mechanical function in the storage and release of urine, the biomechanical properties of the urethra have remained largely unexplored. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an experimental model that can be used for evaluating whole urethral tissue in such a manner. Bladder-urethral specimens were excised from halothane-anesthetized female rats and mounted ...

We present a new approach for making interconnected hemispherical shells by stripping Au from templates of anodized aluminum, where the metal thickness can be adjusted without affecting the outer radius of curvature, film roughness and the sharpness of the hemisphere contact areas. This provides increased understanding of the surface plasmon resonances (SPRs) observed for Film-On-Nanospheres (F...