A. Harb

In today's society, robots are used in many aspects of our lives. For instance, the robot is used as assistance at home, office workplace, hospital, industry plants, educational institution, waste disposal facilities, and others. However, the use of robots to detect and to avoid the exposure to toxic and harmful chemicals has not been addressed adequately. This remains a critical issue and a challenge. To face the challenge, the objective of this paper is to provide a unique perspective in designing and building a tele-operated (human operator with remote control) and autonomous robot (self-guided without human interference) that can detect harmful and lethal chemical gases (NO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , N <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , CO, CO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , LPG, CH <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> , CNG, C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5</sub> OH, NH <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> , H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> and others) on the ground. Applications include coal mine explosion prevention and detections of natural gas and other industrial and explosive chemicals leaks, detection of harmful gases in public gathering places such as subway stations, shopping malls, and airports. This solar chemical detection robot (SCDR) will potentially reduce the massive loss of human life and reduce the destruction to our environment resulting in land prosperity and a healthier ecosystem. The power management and distribution system of SCDR will be powered by an eco-friendly rechargeable battery which can be recharged during the day by solar energy. This will extend the service hours of the SCDR.

COLOR ATLAS AND TEXT OF PULMONARY PATHOLOGY Editor: Philip T. Cagle, MD Bibliographic Data: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2005. ISBN: 0-7817-3453-3, 675 pp, hard cover, $275.00. Reviewer's Expert Opinion: Description: This is a complete color atlas and text of pulmonary pathology, covering both the most common and rare pulmonary diseases as well as the most recently explained pathologies that involve the lungs. This concise book is loaded with tens of hundreds of dazzling color photos. It cleverly manages to provide in-depth coverage without the excessive and dubious details. Purpose: The purpose is to provide readers with high quality figures and essential diagnostic features of pulmonary disease without unnecessary information. With rich quality microphotographs and convenient diagnostic features, this impressive atlas successfully meets its objective without question. Audience: This atlas is intended to be used by practicing pathologists, students, residents, fellows, and specialty board applicants. The ingenious organization provides readily accessible diagnostic features for practicing pathologists wishing to get a move on a more accurate sign-out while managing to be a comprehensive lung pathology tool for the student, resident, fellow, and the specialty board applicant. Written by the expert authorities of pulmonary pathology, this atlas is an indispensable instrument for all. Features: This thorough atlas-text covers all the modalities of lung pathology, including the newly discovered processes of pulmonary disease. As if not already complete, it houses additional chapters on transplant-related, pediatric, forensic, and drug-related pulmonary pathology. In combination with high-quality microphotographs, the topics are logically organized into section, chapters, parts, and subparts. The bulletin-styled diagnostic features for each disease are handy for practicing pathologists while serving as a helpful learning element for students, residents, and fellows. Assessment: In a beautiful, harmonious combination of richly colored microphotographs and essential diagnostic features, this impressive atlas is unrivaled by any other pulmonary atlas-text today. Written by the leading authorities in pulmonary pathology, it has set the bar at an all-new higher level! Reviewer: Ali Harb, MD GRMERC

BACKGROUND. Mini dental implants (MDI) and small diameter implants (SDI) have been extensively used as temporary or orthodontic anchorage; however there have been studies that proved their availability as a mean for long term prosthodontics. Our aim was to review the indications, advantages of MDI and SDI, and their long-term survival. METHODS. Computerized searches were conducted for clinical studies between year 2000 and 2011 that involved either implants with 3.3 mm diameter or less, used in prosthodontics; or provided a follow up of MDI or SDI duration of at least 4 months following implant placement including survival rate data. All studies about implants used in orthodontics were excluded. The range of available MDI and SDI has been found in cataloges of the companies: 3M ESPE IMTEC, Bicon Dental, Zimmer, Implant Direct, Intra lock, Hiossen, Simpler Implant, KAT Implants, OCO Biomedical, American Dental Implant. RESULTS. 41 studies meeting the above criteria were selected, 22 out of them reviewed survival rates of MDI and SDI. The follow up duration varried from 4 months to 8 years with survival rates between 91.17 and 100%. Nevertheless, the companies showed a big variety of MDI and SDI provided in the market for long term prostheses. CONCLUSIONS. Implants with small diameters can be used successfully in a variety of clinical situations. Less surgical time, less postoperative pain, ability of direct loading after surgery with no harm to bone and cost effectiveness are the advantages. The reduced surface implants require correct treatment planning so that the loading force would not cause bone loss or implant failure. MDI and SDI show high survival rates, but special cautions for bone quality and good oral hygiene should be maintained.

A new pixel detector for the CMS experiment was built in order to cope with the instantaneous luminosities anticipated for the Phase~I Upgrade of the LHC. The new CMS pixel detector provides four-hit tracking with a reduced material budget as well as new cooling and powering schemes. A new front-end readout chip mitigates buffering and bandwidth limitations, and allows operation at low comparator thresholds. In this paper, comprehensive test beam studies are presented, which have been conducted to verify the design and to quantify the performance of the new detector assemblies in terms of tracking efficiency and spatial resolution. Under optimal conditions, the tracking efficiency is $99.95\pm0.05\,\%$, while the intrinsic spatial resolutions are $4.80\pm0.25\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ and $7.99\pm0.21\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ along the $100\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ and $150\,\mu \mathrm{m}$ pixel pitch, respectively. The findings are compared to a detailed Monte Carlo simulation of the pixel detector and good agreement is found.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common type of renal malignancy in adults.Bone is a major site of metastatic disease from RCC. Osseous metastatic disease from RCC is often seen in the spine, pelvis, and femur, and is usually hypervascular in nature like its primary tumor source.This can cause significant pain, reduced function, pathological fracture, nerve compression, and decreased quality of life during cancer treatment and disease course.Surgical treatments for pathological fracture of the femur include resection, reconstruction, and stabilization with arthroplasty or placement of an intramedullary nail.This series looks at three cases of renal cell carcinoma metastases to the hip with pre-procedural embolization and orthopedic stabilization.Interventional radiology embolization of the arterial supply to the metastatic hypervascular bone lesions can reduce intraoperative blood loss and associated complications.

Candy Crane is a custom-made robot that looks like a traditional tower crane and is used to pick candies by the young users for fun and for learning mechatronics product design.The tower structure (Mast) is made from either aluminum C-channels or plastics made from 3D printer.Two 12V DC motors and several limit switches are used to control the movement of the crane.A miniature crane to be held by the user is equipped with a linear potentiometer and rotary potentiometer and is used to control the movement of the big tower crane wirelessly through a blue tooth module.An Arduino microcontroller is used as a master to send the movement commands from the miniature crane to the Lego Mindstorms' NXT Brick mounted on Candy Crane.The NXT Brick serves as a slave to relay the commands to drive the DC motors to place the hook to proper location.Once the hook is in the right position, the user can send the hook down to pick up the candy of his/her choice.The user can learn mechanical design, electronic design and programming from the mechatronic toy.

When performing an endoscopic procedure, it is possible that a loop might be formed by the endoscopic tubing inside the patients body. This condition is potentially dangerous and poses a threat to the safety of the patient if the doctor who performs the procedure is unaware of the situation. This paper presents a technique for detecting the formation of an endoscopic loop using fiber optics technology. A custom-made loop detecting device using different configurations of optical fiber wires was developed. The effectiveness of each configuration in detecting the formation of a loop was studied.This loop detecting device was designed such that it can be embedded into an endoscope without increasing the diameter of the endoscopic tubing. If a loop is detected, the device can transmit a warning signal so the doctor who performs the endoscopic procedure can adjust his or her operation to avoid harming the patient.

This paper discusses the use of microcontrollers from Digilent Inc. to engage undergraduate students in researches on mechatronics design and applications through hands-on design projects. Mechatronics technology has been identified as the top ten emerging technology of the 21 st century. Almost all high tech products made in today are mechatronics products in nature on which microcontrollers are embedded into the products to function as the brain of the products. It is important to introduce the mechatronics technology and its practices into the undergraduate curriculums to prepare students with the knowledge and experience needed for them to seek employment in the areas of product design and development and in high tech manufacturing facilities.

This paper adds to the literature of the exchange rates, some practical points which will be of great importance for financial markets and especially for the stock market. Firstly, the daily alternation of High and Low on the exchange rates ofEUR/USD follows a uniform distribution and hence if someone bets on this alternation then he puts himself in a position of maximum uncertainty. Secondly, buying and selling always represent the care for the speculators seeking the right time to open or close their operations. Any decision deprived of necessary information of the exchange rate (market prices) and especially their volatility, leads to a high risk and the probability of failure of such a speculator is highly elevated. The four variables Open, High, Low and Close are stationary in first difference. Since the variables High and Low determine completely the daily extent of the exchange rate EUR/USD, one focused on their evolution taking into account the volatility resulting from an ARCH effect. For these two variables, one performs a measurement of risk using the family of ARCH models such as ARCH-M, EARCH symmetric and asymmetric and GJR-EARCH asymmetric. Thirdly, one presents an analysis of cointegration regression for the four systems of variables (High, Open), (Low, Open) and (High, Low, Open) and (High, Low, Open, Close). Therefore, the Open variable is very informative for those four systems because its value is known at the opening of the market, so it could be served as an endogenous and exogenous variable. Finally, one predicts prices and volatility of the high and Low using the (ECM) models associated to the two first systems and one shows that the ex-post forecasts reveal an excellent performance.

The CMS Binary Chip (CBC) is a prototype version of the front-end read-out ASIC to be used in the silicon strip modules of the CMS outer tracking detector during the high luminosity phase of the LHC. The CBC is produced in 130 nm CMOS technology and bump-bonded to the hybrid of a double layer silicon strip module, the so-called 2S-pT module. It has 254 input channels and is designed to provide on-board trigger information to the first level trigger system of CMS, with the capability of cluster-width discrimination and high-pT track identification. In November 2013 the first 2S-pT module prototypes equipped with the CBC chips were put to test at the DESY-II test beam facility. Data were collected exploiting a beam of positrons with an energy ranging from 2 to 4 GeV. In this paper the test setup and the results are presented.

Route optimization has been used for years to plan the routes for municipal solid waste (MSW) collection trucks to achieve cost reductions. Historically, optimized routes had overlooked a number of aspects and parameters in their design. This study aims to consider MSW odour detection as a performance indicator and a priority constraint in the optimization process by quantifying the impact of objectionable odours from uncollected aged MSW that contains a high percentage of food waste (typically called wet garbage). Odours from 48 aged food waste samples were rated on a scale from 0 to 3 to mark the beginning of the critical time of objectionable odour detection. The critical time was found to take place approximately at the hour 13.6, which was then used, along with the estimated food waste weight in the bin, to define the beginning of a time window that puts the bin on a high priority status for collection over the other, less odoriferous bins. Three optimization scenarios for collection of 100 MSW bins in the city of Madaba, Jordan, were conducted under different constraints: least travelled distance, maximum collected volume and least odour impact. Without the application of the odour consideration, a total travelled distance of 143 km was the shortest travelled distance achieved, with 53 bins emitting odours and leaving 81 m 3 of uncollected waste. However, when odour impact was the main routing constraint, a total travelled distance of 161 km was needed and 13 m 3 of waste was left uncollected.

MoDAR is a custom-made low cost Mobility Detection and Auto Recognition (MoDAR) smart device that can be used to help physically and visually impaired people to live relatively independently.It utilizes the open-source facial recognition, voice recognition software, and biosensor technology to detect people in its surroundings.This bio-mechatronics device can be a fully automated stand alone system with add on abilities such as global positioning and area mapping to deliver feedbacks to the user.MoDAR can receive commands from the user through voice commands and through a couple of control switches.In addition, the device will be equipped with safety features to warn the user of any potential hazardous situation.

Of what do the young dream now? How do they think? What do they look to? What motivates them in the midst of those rapid changes, sudden mutations and radical transformations?I will not be simplistic by saying that things are as they should be, nor by welcoming every change that takes place. But I am not an alarmist lamenting past values, as some do. Nor am I blind to the changes so as to deny what is taking place, nor to judge whatever is new as being decadent, degenerate, or negative and nihilistic.

Cette these est subdivisee en trois parties. Faisabilite : dans cette partie, nous etudions la faisabilite de n flux deterministes d'arrivees dans une file d'attente soumise a la contrainte temps-reel forte. Cette contrainte specifie que les clients ont un delai maximum sur le temps de sejour dans la file, le client est rejete des que le delai maximum est echu. Pour differentes disciplines de service, nous etudions les conditions sous lesquelles la contrainte temps-reel forte est respectee. Reseau de Jackson : ce chapitre traite les reseaux de Jackson sous l'angle de l'analyse non standard. Nous analysons dans cette partie des conditions non habituelles pour la stabilite des reseaux de files d'attente. GI/GI/q + G : cette derniere partie est consacree a l'etude de la chaine de Markov associee a la file GI/GI/q + G : on retrouve ici le cadre de la premiere partie ou les clients ont un temps d'impatience qui limite leurs temps de sejour dans la file. Nous demontrons l'irreductibilite et la recurrence au sens de Harris de la chaine concernee.