Utilizing the gathered failure data and failure interval data from Tabas coal mine in two years, this paper discusses the reliability of powered supports. The data sets were investigated using statistical procedures and in two levels: the existence of trend and serial correlation. The results show that the powered supports follow the Gamma reliability function. The reliability of the machine de...

The hydrodynamic basis for the accumulation of spermatozoa at surfaces has been investigated. The general conclusion is that when spermatozoa arrive at a surface, they will remain there if the vector of the time-averaged thrust is directed towards that surface. This can arise in two basic ways. First, consider spermatozoa that maintain a three-dimensional waveform and roll (spin) as they progre...

This paper presents a self-supervised method for detecting the active speaker in a multi-person spoken interaction scenario. We argue that this capability is a fundamental prerequisite for any artificial cognitive system attempting to acquire language in social settings. Our methods are able to detect an arbitrary number of possibly overlapping active speakers based exclusively on visual inform...

In this paper, the Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) concept is combined with the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for solving the exterior Neumann problem associated with the steady lifting flow around a hydrofoil. The formulation of the problem is based on a Boundary Integral Equation for the associated velocity potential combined with the null-pressure jump Kutta condition at the trailing edge. The d...

The interaction of gas bubbles with a vortex is investigated experimentally to clarify the role of the initial bubble position on its trajectory around the tip vortex shed from a large hydrofoil. The experiments performed with 4-6mm bubbles show that the bubbles can undergo no capture, quick capture into the tip vortex or slow capture with a spiral trajectory around the vortex.

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...

Crowdsourcing markets like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) make it possible to task people with small jobs, such as labeling images or looking up phone numbers, via a programmatic interface. MTurk tasks for processing datasets with humans are currently designed with significant reimplementation of common workflows and ad-hoc selection of parameters such as price to pay per task. We describe ho...

This paper describes how crowds are integrated into a declarative workflow engine called Qurk to reduce the burden on workflow designers. The authors focus on how to use humans to compare items for two of the most common operations in DBMSs: sorting and joining data. Basic query interface and the user interface of the tasks posted to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk were described. They also propose a ...

A gravity balancing lower extremity exoskeleton is a simple mechanical device composed of rigid links, joints and springs, which is adjustable to the geometry and inertia of the leg of a human subject wearing it. This passive exoskeleton does not use any motors or controllers, yet can still unload the human leg joints of the gravity load over the full range of motion of the leg. The underlying ...