Elmer C. Lupton

Power electronic drives for magnetically triggered gels

Properly fabricated polymer gels exhibit an abrupt change in volume in response to a small change in an environmental parameter, such as temperature. The authors have developed gels that change in volume in response to an applied alternating magnetic field, and are working to apply these gels as actuators. This paper describes power electronic circuits suitable for electromagnetic activation of these polymer gels. Issues in the selection of circuit topologies for this application are discussed. Experimental results are presented, which demonstrate the magnetic activation of gels using prototype power electronic drives.

Using talking lights illumination-based communication networks to enhance word comprehension by people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

This article details a new method that has been developed to transmit auditory and visual information to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In this method, ordinary fluorescent lighting is modulated to carry an assistive data signal throughout a room while causing no flicker or other distracting visual problems. In limited trials with participants who are deaf or hard of hearing, this assistive system, combined with commercial voice recognition software, showed statistically significant improvement in sentence recognition compared to recognition of audio-only or audio-plus-speech-reading stimuli.