The Online Electron Microscopy Platform makes electron microscopy education accessible by combining simulation-based practice with a range of educational content. Students learn how to operate electron microscopes by using virtual microscopes that precisely simulate the functions of real microscopes. Built as a web application, the platform can be used by an unlimited number of people and at any time. This platform reduces the time needed for training users to operate a real microscope. By preparing students in STEM disciplines to use electron microscopes, the system helps them acquire the skills they need to succeed in the modern workforce.

This paper investigates the vibrations of hexarot simulators. The generalized modeling of kinematics and dynamics formulation of a hexarot mechanism is addressed. This model considers the flexible manipulator with the base motion. The dynamic formulation has been developed based on the principle of virtual work. The dynamic model consists of the stiffness of the different parts of the mechanism, the effects of gravity and inertia, torque and force related to the joints viscous friction. Finally, the response of the end effector at various frequencies has been presented, and the vibrations of the mechanism and the dynamic stability index have been investigated.

This paper considers capabilities and benefits of aircraft-sized radio/radar frequency anechoic chambers for Test and Evaluation (T&E) of Electronic Warfare (EW), radar and other electromagnetics aspects of air and ground platforms. There are few such chambers worldwide. Initially developed to reduce costs, timescales and risks associated with open-air range flight testing of EW systems, their utility has expanded to most areas of platforms’ electromagnetics’ T&E. A key feature is the ability to conduct T&E of nationally sensitive equipment and systems, fully installed on platforms, in absolute privacy. Chambers’ capabilities and uses are described, with emphasis on key infrastructure and instrumentation. Non-EW uses are identified and selected topics elaborated. Operation and maintenance are discussed, based on experiential knowledge from international use and the authors’ 30 years’ involvement with BAE Systems’ EW Test Facility. A view is provided of trends and challenges whose resolution could further increase chamber utility. National affordability challenges also suggest utility expansion to support continuing moves, from expensive and difficult to repeat flight test and operational evaluation trials, towards an affordability-driven optimal balance between modelling and simulation, and real-world testing of platforms.

Objectives: The effect of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) on driving performance in older adults has not been extensively investigated, especially in those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between severity measures of SDB and a simulated driving task in older adults with and without MCI. Methods: Nineteen older adults (age ≥50) meeting criteria for MCI and 23 age-matched cognitively intact controls underwent neuropsychological assessment and a driving simulator task in the evening before a diagnostic sleep study. Results: There were no differences in driving simulator performance or SDB severity between the two groups. In patients with MCI, a higher oxygen desaturation index (ODI) was associated with an increased number of crashes on the simulator task, as well as other driving parameters such as steering and speed deviation. Poorer driving performance was also associated with poorer executive functioning (set-shifting) but the relationship between ODI and crashes was independent of executive ability. Conclusions: While driving ability did not differ between older adults with and without MCI, oxygen saturation dips in MCI were related to worse driving performance. These results suggest that decreased brain integrity may render those with SDB particularly vulnerable to driving accidents. In older adults, both cognition and SDB need to be considered concurrently in relation to driving ability. (JINS, 2017, 23, 502–510)

This paper describes four agribusiness simulators which can be processed on a microcomputer for use in undergraduate and extension teaching. The simulators model the environment in which supermarket chains, farm supply centers, and cooperative and proprietary grain elevators compete for business. Instruction manuals, user's manuals, and a diskette are distributed for each simulator. Each diskette contains programs to enter and edit team decisions, to process decisions and print reports, and to create graphs of team performance. The simulators can be used to teach financial management concepts and techniques, as well as economic principles.

L'évaluation d'un implant, en terme de contrôle qualité, ne peut se faire en définitive que par l'investigation clinique. Cette démarche ne devrait pas toucher seulement les nouveaux implants mais s'appliquer aussi à toute modification même légère d'un implant déjà existant et cliniquement éprouvé. L'investigation clinique prospective reste cependant une approche lourde, contraignante et longue. Elle n'est entreprise actuellement que pour de nouveaux implants ou lorsqu'une modification véritablement innovante est apportée à un implant déjà existant [1]. Dans le cadre du développement d'un nouvel implant articulaire et notamment lors de la conception d'une nouvelle géométrie ou lors du choix d'un nouveau procédé de stérilisation, il pourrait être intéressant de posséder un outil de test pré-clinique permettant de prévoir le comportement et les performances de cette prothèse avant d'investir des moyens lourds dans une étude clinique qui reste cependant indispensable à terme. Les essais tribologiques sur simulateurs offrent cette possibilité [2]. Cette étude porte sur la mise au point et la validation d'un simulateur pour prothèses totales de hanche. À travers nos résultats expérimentaux, développés sur tribomètre à trois unités, nous montrons l'importance des effets du procédé de stérilisation, ainsi que le rôle que peut jouer le milieu biologique et les couples de matériaux de friction (tête et cotyle de la prothèse) sur la tenue en service des prothèses totales de hanche (PTH). Les prothèses de hanche de diamètre plus élevé (Ø28 mm) et le choix du couple (CoCrMo/polyéthylène) semblent donner un taux d'usure plus faible, et en conséquence, une meilleure longévité des arthroplasties totales de hanche [3].

This article reviews the development and potential impact of Digitally Reconstructed Radiographs (DRR's) in the planning and verification of radiotherapy treatments. It explores the requirements for the creation of usable DRR's their integration into current verification methods and it highlights some of the factors that may influence the routine use of DRR's. Continuing developments in radiotherapy techniques demand increasingly accurate verification methods. DRR's provide an efficient and effective representation of planned treatments for comparison with both simulator and portal images, encompassing the digital imaging technology which is the future of radiotherapy treatment verification.

Ball passing is an elementary and frequently employed human soccer skill. This paper examines the realization and visualization of ball passing, a low level move-to-ball behavior of a soccer robot, in a robot soccer game. A case study of three mechanically identical mobile robots with a formation ready to pass a ball cyclically in a zigzag pattern is examined. We build a control command driven mobile robot motion simulator with a controller and dynamics of mobile robots, not only nonholonomic kinematic constraints to simulate the motion of a soccer robot driven by wheels torques to generate wheels accelerations, to update the robot position and orientation at successive time instants. Kick motion follows a physical law, and a simplified collision check and response model is utilized for the efficient detection of the hitting a robot with the ball or other robots. The realization of specific ball passing strategy to drive each soccer robot in a position to receive a pass includes three levels of organization, coordination, and execution: careful integrated design of a dynamic formation and role change scheme, ball position estimation, and coordinated trajectory (i.e. path and velocity) planning and tracking control. Simulations are performed to illustrate the feasibility of the realization of ball passing among three robots, implemented by a software program for coordinated trajectory planning and tracking control in the developed simulator.

We present here a visualization environment for the train industry, where engineers, designers or executives can discuss and analyze visual, aesthetics and ergonomic issues of a train model before it is built. Instead of building a full-size real model, which is not too practical at all regarding design modifications, a virtual model is built in the digital realm, thus taking advantage of the flexibility it offers while keeping costs at approximately one third of the real model.The environment is based on a low cost, PC-based, CAVE-like architecture, (which we have named CLS, or CAVE-Like System) and combines static and dynamic computer generated imagery, both with and without stereoscopy for 3D visualization, as well as Augmented Virtuality techniques for the integration of the train with its environment. The system has already been tested and used by the Spanish companies Renfe and CAF in the design of the new Civia train.

This paper presents the simulator SHADYS (‘simulator halieutique de dynamiques spatiales’). SHADYS is a tool devoted to the representation of spatial processes involved in fisheries dynamics. It puts together three fundamental entities in an explicit spatio-temporal way: the environment, the fish populations under consideration and the fishing fleet. It is based on simple, realistic and well identified mechanisms (density-dependent habitat selection, advection and diffusion of a fish population, fishermen search strategy, etc.) implemented by interfacing numerical models with a GIS (geographic information system). As a virtual laboratory, SHADYS allows experiments to be performed in a theoretical world, such experiments being generally impossible to perform in reality. As an illustration, different scenarios of a marine refugia-based management have been explored using the SHADYS simulator. Different simulations are conducted to assess the short-term effects on yield of a marine protected area. It is shown that for diffusive or migratory species, the yield per recruit as a function of the protected surface can reach a maximum. Under this condition, the concept of ‘space overfishing’ is meaningful. Protected areas then behave like ‘sources’ and exploited areas like ‘sinks’. For resident populations, the larger the protected area is, the lower the catches per recruit are. Regarding the spatial distribution of the fishing effort, it is shown that if it is spatially distributed in order to maximize catches, then fishing boats will slowly tend to be distributed all along the boundaries of the protected area.