Description: Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 3015: Noncontact Strain Monitoring of Osseointegrated Prostheses Sensors doi: 10.3390/s18093015 Authors: Sumit Gupta Han-Joo Lee Kenneth J. Loh Michael D. Todd Joseph Reed A. Drew Barnett The objective of this study was to develop a noncontact, noninvasive, imaging system for monitoring the strain and deformation states of osseointegrated prostheses. The proposed sensing methodology comprised of two parts. First, a passive thin film was designed such that its electrical permittivity increases in tandem with applied tensile loading and decreases while unloading. It was found that patterning the thin films could enhance their dielectric property’s sensitivity to strain. The film can be deposited onto prosthesis surfaces as an external coating prior to implant. Second, an electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) measurement technique and reconstruction algorithm were implemented to capture strain-induced changes in the dielectric property of nanocomposite-coated prosthesis phantoms when subjected to different loading scenarios. The preliminary results showed that ECT, when coupled with strain-sensitive nanocomposites, could quantify the strain-induced changes in the dielectric property of thin film-coated prosthesis phantoms. The results suggested that ECT coupled with embedded thin films could serve as a new noncontact strain sensing method for scenarios when tethered strain sensors cannot be used or instrumented, especially in the case of osseointegrated prostheses.

Description: Remote Sensing, Vol. 10, Pages 1325: HIRS Outgoing Longwave Radiation—Daily Climate Data Record: Application toward Identifying Tropical Subseasonal Variability Remote Sensing doi: 10.3390/rs10091325 Authors: Carl J. Schreck Hai-Tien Lee Kenneth R. Knapp This study describes the development of a new globally gridded climate data record (CDR) for daily outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) using the High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) sensor. The new product, hereafter referred to as HIRS OLR, has several differences and advantages over the widely-used daily OLR dataset derived from the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensor on the same NOAA Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES), hereafter AVHRR OLR. As a CDR, HIRS OLR has been intersatellite-calibrated to provide the most homogeneous record possible. AVHRR OLR only used the daytime and nighttime overpasses from a single satellite at a time, which creates some challenges for resolving the large diurnal cycle of OLR. HIRS OLR leverages all available overpasses and then calibrates geostationary estimates of OLR to represent that cycle more faithfully. HIRS also has more spectral channels, including those for measuring water vapor, which provides a more accurate measure of OLR. This difference is particularly relevant for large-scale convective systems such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Madden–Julian Oscillation, whereby the HIRS OLR can better identify the subtropical variability between the tropical convection and the extratropical teleconnections.