Energy expenditure and muscular activation patterns through active sitting on compliant surfaces

Purpose: To test the effectiveness of sitting surfaces with varied amounts of stability on muscle activity and energy expenditure.Methods: Using a within-participants repeated measures design, 11 healthy young-adult females(age = 20.0 ± 1.8 years) were measured using indirect calorimetry to assess energy expenditure, and electromyography to assess muscular activation in trunk and leg musculature under 3different sitting surfaces: flat-firm surface, air-filled cushion, and a stability ball. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance with follow-up pairwise contrasts used to determine the specific effects of sitting surface on muscle activation and energy expenditure.Results: Significantly greater energy expenditure was recorded for the stability ball(p = 0.01) and the cushion(p = 0.03) over the flat surface(10.4% and 9.6% greater, respectively), with no differences between the ball and the cushion. Both the ball and the cushion produced higher tibialis anterior activation over the flat surface(1.09 and 0.63 root-mean-square millivolts(RMSmv), respectively), while the stability ball produced higher soleus activity over both cushion and flat surfaces(3.97 and 4.24 RMSmv, respectively). Additionally, the cushion elicited higher adductor longus activity over the ball and flat surfaces(1.76 and 1.81 RMSmv, respectively), but no trunk musculature differences were revealed.Conclusion: Compliant surfaces resulted in higher levels of muscular activation in the lower extremities facilitating increased caloric expenditure.Given the increasing trends in sedentary careers and the increases in obesity, this is an important finding to validate the merits of active sitting facilitating increased caloric expenditure and muscle activation.

An electrophoretic display driving waveform based on improvement of activation pattern

Electrophoretic display(EPD) technology has become one of the main supporting pillars of the electronic paper display industry.Despite its benefits,the EPD technology suffers from several disadvantages such as non-fixed threshold voltage value for gray scale display.In addition,the display has to repeatedly refresh between white and black states to eliminate ghost image when it needs to update a new image.The traditional driving waveform for the EPD includes four stages: erasing the original image,resetting to black state,clearing to white state,and writing a new image.A flicker can be found when transferring between two adjacent stages.A new driving waveform based on the improvement of activation pattern is proposed to weaken the ghost image and reduce the flicker.Experimental results show that the proposed driving waveform could weaken the ghost image effectively and reduce the number of flickers by 50%.Compared with the traditional driving waveform,the driving waveform of this work has a better performance.

Mathematical Model for Electroosmotic Dewatering of Activated Sludge

The mechanical dewatering of activated sludge is difficult due to its high compressibility, which can be improved by electroosmosis. In electroosmosis, direct electric field is applied to sludge cake. Based on the conductivity modes of different sludge beds, a model is presented in which sludge cake consists of two series parts in the circuit: a dewatered bed and an undewatered one. The dewatered bed called solid conductor is mainly made up of immovable water and sludge particles. The undewatered bed includes movable water and solid conductor, which are connected in parallel in the circuit. The model describes the variation of water content with time and electric power consumption as a function of water content in sludge cake, and interprets the reason for the variation of electroosmotic dewatering rate. Comparison with the experimental data for electroosmotic dewatering under constant voltage supports the validity of the model.

全内腔绿（黄、橙）光He－Ne激光器

全内脏绿光Ｈｅ－Ｎｅ激光器在我国已首次制成，全内腔黄／橙光激光器也已制成。文中报道了它们的性能，并讨论了有关原理和工艺技术的问题。