Travel datasets for analysing the electric vehicle charging demand in a university campus.

This article presents travel datasets of privately used vehicles for the determination of the daily charging demand of electric vehicles (EV) at a university campus and to analyse strategies to minimise the annual energy cost. The datasets have been used in the primary research article published in the Renewable Energy journal [1]. The original raw data of vehicle usage is sourced from the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel & Activity (VISTA) [2], which is an ongoing survey led by the Department of Transport and Planning of the Victorian State Government. Since 2012, data collection has been evenly distributed across each year, with 32,000 households and 82,000 individuals participating in the ongoing survey. The raw dataset is filtered and processed to obtain the daily travel distance and workplace arrival-departure times of privately used vehicles. Probability distributions and cumulative distributions of the daily travel distance and workplace arrival-departure times respectively are extracted. Using these distributions, the year-round travel data (daily travel distance and workplace arrival-departure times) is created for the desired number of EVs individually. These are used to generate the daily EV charging demand profile at the workplace so that appropriate charging strategies and cost optimisation methods can be tested. The experimental methods used to obtain the required data, from downloading the raw dataset to creating the individual EV's travel data are described in this paper.

FlexiS-A Flexible Sensor Node Platform for the Internet of Things.

In recent years, significant research and development efforts have been made to transform the Internet of Things (IoT) from a futuristic vision to reality. The IoT is expected to deliver huge economic benefits through improved infrastructure and productivity in almost all sectors. At the core of the IoT are the distributed sensing devices or sensor nodes that collect and communicate information about physical entities in the environment. These sensing platforms have traditionally been developed around off-the-shelf microcontrollers. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have been used in some of the recent sensor nodes due to their inherent flexibility and high processing capability. FPGAs can be exploited to huge advantage because the sensor nodes can be configured to adapt their functionality and performance to changing requirements. In this paper, FlexiS, a high performance and flexible sensor node platform based on FPGA, is presented. Test results show that FlexiS is suitable for data and computation intensive applications in wireless sensor networks because it offers high performance with low energy profile, easy integration of multiple types of sensors, and flexibility. This type of sensing platforms will therefore be suitable for the distributed data analysis and decision-making capabilities the emerging IoT applications require.

Evaluating Energy Generation Capacity of PVDF Sensors: Effects of Sensor Geometry and Loading.

This paper focuses on the energy generating capacity of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric material through a number of prototype sensors with different geometric and loading characteristics. The effect of sensor configuration, surface area, dielectric thickness, aspect ratio, loading frequency and strain on electrical power output was investigated systematically. Results showed that parallel bimorph sensor was found to be the best energy harvester, with measured capacitance being reasonably acceptable. Power output increased with the increase of sensor's surface area, loading frequency, and mechanical strain, but decreased with the increase of the sensor thickness. For all scenarios, sensors under flicking loading exhibited higher power output than that under bending. A widely used energy harvesting circuit had been utilized successfully to convert the AC signal to DC, but at the sacrifice of some losses in power output. This study provided a useful insight and experimental validation into the optimization process for an energy harvester based on human movement for future development.

PV generation and load profile data of net zero energy homes in South Australia.

This paper presents the hourly Photovoltaic (PV) generation and residential load profiles of a typical South Australian Net Zero Energy (NZE) home. These data are used in the research article entitled "Energy Cost Minimization for Net Zero Energy Homes through Optimal Sizing of Battery Storage System" Sharma et al., 2019. The PV generation data is derived using the publicly accessible renewable ninja web platform by feeding information such as the region of interest, PV system capacity, losses and tilt angle. The raw load profile data is sourced from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) website, which is further processed and filtered to match the household load requirement. The processing of data has been carried out using Microsoft Excel and MATLAB software. The experimental method used to obtain the required data from the downloaded raw dataset is described in this paper. While the data is generated for the state of South Australia (SA), the method described here can be used to produce datasets for any other Australian state.

Identification of Foot Pathologies Based on Plantar Pressure Asymmetry.

Foot pathologies can negatively influence foot function, consequently impairing gait during daily activity, and severely impacting an individual's quality of life. These pathologies are often painful and correspond with high or abnormal plantar pressure, which can result in asymmetry in the pressure distribution between the two feet. There is currently no general consensus on the presence of asymmetry in able-bodied gait, and plantar pressure analysis during gait is in dire need of a standardized method to quantify asymmetry. This paper investigates the use of plantar pressure asymmetry for pathological gait diagnosis. The results of this study involving plantar pressure analysis in fifty one participants (31 healthy and 20 with foot pathologies) support the presence of plantar pressure asymmetry in normal gait. A higher level of asymmetry was detected at the majority of the regions in the feet of the pathological population, including statistically significant differences in the plantar pressure asymmetry in two regions of the foot, metatarsophalangeal joint 3 (MPJ3) and the lateral heel. Quantification of plantar pressure asymmetry may prove to be useful for the identification and diagnosis of various foot pathologies.

A simple and inexpensive enteric-coated capsule for delivery of acid-labile macromolecules to the small intestine.

Understanding the ecology of the gastrointestinal tract and the impact of the contents on the host mucosa is emerging as an important area for defining both wellness and susceptibility to disease. Targeted delivery of drugs to treat specific small intestinal disorders such as small bowel bacterial overgrowth and targeting molecules to interrogate or to deliver vaccines to the remote regions of the small intestine has proven difficult. There is an unmet need for methodologies to release probes/drugs to remote regions of the gastrointestinal tract in furthering our understanding of gut health and pathogenesis. In order to address this concern, we need to know how the regional delivery of a surrogate labeled test compound is handled and in turn, if delivered locally as a liquid or powder, the dynamics of its subsequent handling and metabolism. In the studies we report on in this paper, we chose (13)C sodium acetate ((13)C-acetate), which is a stable isotope probe that once absorbed in the small intestine can be readily measured non-invasively by collection and analysis of (13)CO2 in the breath. This would provide information of gastric emptying rates and an indication of the site of release and absorptive capacity. In a series of in vitro and in vivo pig experiments, we assessed the enteric-protective properties of a commercially available polymer EUDRAGIT(®) L100-55 on gelatin capsules and also on DRcaps(®). Test results demonstrated that DRcaps(®) coated with EUDRAGIT(®) L100-55 possessed enhanced enteric-protective properties, particularly in vivo. These studies add to the body of knowledge regarding gastric emptying in pigs and also begin the process of gathering specifications for the design of a simple and cost-effective enteric-coated capsule for delivery of acid-labile macromolecules to the small intestine.

Sensor anomaly detection in wireless sensor networks for healthcare.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are vulnerable to various sensor faults and faulty measurements. This vulnerability hinders efficient and timely response in various WSN applications, such as healthcare. For example, faulty measurements can create false alarms which may require unnecessary intervention from healthcare personnel. Therefore, an approach to differentiate between real medical conditions and false alarms will improve remote patient monitoring systems and quality of healthcare service afforded by WSN. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to detect sensor anomaly by analyzing collected physiological data from medical sensors. The objective of this method is to effectively distinguish false alarms from true alarms. It predicts a sensor value from historic values and compares it with the actual sensed value for a particular instance. The difference is compared against a threshold value, which is dynamically adjusted, to ascertain whether the sensor value is anomalous. The proposed approach has been applied to real healthcare datasets and compared with existing approaches. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system, providing high Detection Rate (DR) and low False Positive Rate (FPR).

A real-time localization system for an endoscopic capsule using magnetic sensors.

Magnetic sensing technology offers an attractive alternative for in vivo tracking with much better performance than RF and ultrasound technologies. In this paper, an efficient in vivo magnetic tracking system is presented. The proposed system is intended to localize an endoscopic capsule which delivers biomarkers around specific locations of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. For efficiently localizing a magnetic marker inside the capsule, a mathematical model has been developed for the magnetic field around a cylindrical magnet and used with a localization algorithm that provides minimum error and fast computation. The proposed tracking system has much reduced complexity compared to the ones reported in the literature to date. Laboratory tests and in vivo animal trials have demonstrated the suitability of the proposed system for tracking a magnetic marker with expected accuracy.

A real-time tracking system for in vivo endofunctional capsule using magnetic sensors.

This paper presents a real-time magnetic tracking system to be used for tracking an endofunctional capsule intended to aid in the delivery of biomarkers to specific areas in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Magnetic technology is chosen due to its significant advantages over others like RF and Ultrasonics. The tracking system is designed to be used with eight magnetic sensors making it less complex than the other proposed systems. The paper describes a new mathematical model which is more accurate than the existing ones, a linear tracking algorithm and system's performance evaluation for three sensor configurations. The algorithm copes with the problem of magnetic field strength drop due to varying orientation of magnet. The minimum average error obtained is 1.37cm/6.85% in a 20×20×20 cm(3) volume for two dimensional sensor configuration.

A near infrared instrument to monitor relative hemoglobin concentrations of human bone tissue in vitro and in vivo.

A continuous wave near infrared instrument has been developed to monitor in vivo changes in the hemoglobin concentration of the trabecular compartment of human bone. The transmitter uses only two laser diodes of wavelengths 685 and 830 nm, and the receiver uses a single silicon photodiode operating in the photovoltaic mode. The functioning of the instrument and the depth of penetration of the near infrared signals was determined in vitro using tissue-equivalent phantoms. The instrument achieves a depth of penetration of approximately 2 cm for an optode separation of 4 cm and, therefore, has the capacity to interrogate the trabecular compartment of human bone. The functioning of the instrument was tested in vivo to evaluate the relative oxy-hemoglobin (HbO(2)) and deoxy-hemoglobin (Hb) concentrations of the proximal tibial bone of apparently healthy, normal weight, adult subjects in response to a 3 min on, 5 min off, vascular occlusion protocol. The traces of the relative Hb and HbO(2) concentrations obtained were reproducible in controlled conditions. The instrument is relatively simple and flexible, and offers an inexpensive platform for further studies to obtain normative data for healthy cohorts, and to evaluate disease-specific performance characteristics for cohorts with vasculopathies of bone.