Observations of oscillations of temperature and wind in planetary atmospheres provide a means of generalizing models for atmospheric dynamics in a diverse set of planets in the Solar System and elsewhere. An equatorial oscillation similar to one in the Earth's atmosphere 1,2 has been discovered in Jupiter 3-6 . Here we report the existence of similar oscillations in Saturn's atmosphere, from an analysis of over two decades of spatially resolved observations of its 7.8-mm methane and 12.2-mm ethane stratospheric emissions, where we compare zonal-mean stratospheric brightness temperatures at planetographic latitudes of 3.66 and 15.56 in both the northern and the southern hemispheres. These results support the interpretation of vertical and meridional variability of temperatures in Saturn's stratosphere 7 as a manifestation of a wave phenomenon similar to that on the Earth and in Jupiter. The period of this oscillation is 14.8 6 1.2 terrestrial years, roughly half of Saturn's year, suggesting the influence of seasonal forcing, as is the case with the Earth's semi-annual oscillation 1 .These conclusions are based on a sequence of filtered mid-infrared maps or images of Saturn, through narrow-to medium-band spectral filters that are sensitive to upwelling radiance emerging from Saturn's stratosphere. As in our study of Jupiter 6 , we preferred to use the emission of stratospheric methane at wavelengths of around 7.8 mm to detect the stratospheric temperature field near the 20-mbar pressure level in the atmosphere, because methane is expected to be well mixed in Saturn's stratosphere. Thus, all variations in the thermal radiance must be attributed to variations in temperature, rather than in the methane abundance. However, because 7.8-mm methane emission is much fainter for Saturn than it is for Jupiter, most of our earliest observations with lengthy raster scans consist only of observations of much brighter stratospheric emission from ethane at wavelengths of around 12.2 mm (see the Supplementary Information), because only these images had sufficient signal-to-noise ratios to be useful. Figure 1 shows examples of 7.8-mm methane emission observed from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in two different phases of the oscillation. Details of the observations are given in the Supplementary Information.The angular resolution of scans and images at the IRTF was limited by diffraction to no better than 0.7 arcsec (at latitude 4u) for 7.8-mm methane emission and 1.1 arcsec (at latitude 7u) for 12.2-mm ethane emission, with some additional blurring arising from seeing (that is, distortion due to terrestrial atmospheric turbulence). (Here and below, latitude values without an explicit attribution refer to either the northern or the southern hemisphere.) It is possible to resolve differences between emission at planetographic latitudes of 3.6u and 15.5u (planetocentric latitudes of 3.0u and 13.0u) in all the images used in this study, which is a requirement for this investigation. We ignored regions of the planet that ...
The improvement in processor performance through continuous breakthroughs in transistor technology has resulted in the proliferation of lightweight embedded systems. Advances in wireless technology and embedded systems have enabled remote healthcare and telemedicine. Continuous and real-time monitoring can discretely analyze how a patient's lifestyle affects his/her physiological conditions and if additional symptoms occur under various stimuli. Diabetes is one of most difficult challenges facing the healthcare industry today. One of the primary afflictions of diabetic patients is peripheral neuropathy (loss of sensation in the foot). As a direct result of this condition, the likelihood of ulcer increases which in many cases leads to to amputation. We have developed a wireless electronic orthotics composed of lightweight embedded systems and non-invasive sensors which can be used by diabetic patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy. Our proposed system monitors feet motion and pressure distribution beneath the feet in real-time and classifies the state of the patient. The proposed system detects the conditions that could potentially cause a foot ulcer. This system enables a continuous feedback mechanism for instance in case of an undesired behavior or condition a preemptive message wirelessly to the patient and the patient's caregiver.
Several diseases and medical conditions require constant monitoring of physiological signals and vital signs on daily bases, such as diabetics, hypertension and etc. In order to make these patients capable of living their daily life it is necessary to provide a platform and infrastructure that allows the constant collection of physiological data even when the patient is not inside of the coverage area. The data must be rapidly "transported" to care givers or to the designated medical enterprise. The problem is particularly severe in case of emergencies (e.g. natural disasters or hostile attacks) when the communications infrastructure (e.g. cellular telephony, WiFi public access, etc) has failed or is totally congested. In this paper we present an evaluation of of the vehicular adhoc networks (VANET) as an alternate method of collecting patient pre-recorded physiological data and at the same time reconfiguring patient medical wearable body vests to select the data specifically requested by the physicians. Another important use of vehicular collection of medical data from body vests is prompted by the need to correlate pedestrian reaction to vehicular traffic hazards such as chemical and noise pollution and traffic congestion. The vehicles collect noise, chemical and traffic samples and can directly correlate with the "stress level" of volunteers.
Body area networks are becoming more and more popular in addressing health care application due to advances in sensing technologies and the fact the these networks lie within close proximity of the body. We have developed a general purpose wearable platform using lightweight embedded system to address various medical applications. This architecture is composed of tiny processors/microcontrollers equipped with non-invasive sensors. In addition, an on-body terminal enables the system to be reconfigurable and to communicate with medical enterprises. Since our architecture is made of software programmable blocks, it becomes a reconfigurable system. We introduce different levels of reconfiguration for body area networks and illustrate how reconfiguration can address several design challenges such as adaptability, reliability and power consumption. Finally, we formulate sampling rate assignment as a means of power reduction while meeting performance specification. Through our formulation, power dissipation can be minimized and at the same time, the desired accuracy of the system is achieved.
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